ABSTRACT
Technological advancements play a crucial ameliorating role in managing the long-standing problems of environment and climate change. Long-term sustainability of economic growth requires understanding about the environmental impacts of technological changes as the environmental impacts of economic activities are profoundly associated with the rate and direction of technological changes. Environmental technologies include not only the end-of-pipe technologies such as scrubbers for use on industrial smokestacks or catalytic converters for automobiles. They also include the technologies that change the production processes, such as improved energy efficiency. Moreover, note that environmental problems and associated policy responses evolve over long time horizons, and the cumulative impacts of technological changes are likely to be large. Most of the models of technological measurement are concerned with exogenous technological change, but economists cite use of economic instruments such as pollution taxes and emissions trading permits for the advancement of environmental technologies.
