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The introduction and adoption of green technologies are considered the most cost effective way to reduce environmental pressure without compromising economic competitiveness. The scientific literature has emphasized the crucial role played by diffusion pathways of green technologies along the supply value chain, but empirical quantitative findings on the effectiveness of green technologies in improving environmental performance are scarce. The objective of this paper is to highlight the role of inter-sectoral linkages in shaping the influence played by eco-innovations on sectoral environmental performance. Empirical findings show that both the direct and indirect effects of eco-innovations help reducing environmental stress and that the strength of these impacts varies across the value chain depending on the technology adopted and the type of pollutant under scrutiny. The main implications we can deduce are that, first both corporate and policy governance strategies should specifically address the goal of maximizing environmental gains that can be achieved through the development and adoption of clean technologies along the supply chain, and second both strategies should be coordinated in order to minimize the costs for reducing environmental pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Providing more affordable and cleaner energy for all raises complex and significant financial, political, technical, and institutional issues, which must all be addressed to ensure sustainable development. Energy technology innovation has a critical role to play as one of the best pathways to achieve the transition to a global clean energy system. This paper is an endeavor to study the impact of government energy technology research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) budget, which is the primary input of energy technology innovations on cleaner energy supply and carbon footprints (CFP). In this study, a cleaner energy supply is measured as the contribution of renewable energy to total primary energy supply (RE). We assumed that the effect of energy innovation is not uniform but varies according to the descending and ascending movements in a government's energy technology RD&D budget. To this end, we distinguished the impact of the descending and ascending movements in government energy technology RD&D budgets on cleaner energy supply, and CFP in Europe over the period 1985 to 2016. Additionally, we carried out a comparative examination of the effects of energy technology RD&D expenditures on RE and CFP under both linear and nonlinear panel techniques. To increase room for policy implications, we also controlled for the role of economic growth and trade openness and performed several robustness check analyses. We found that the reduction of carbon footprints associated with an increase in public support to energy technology RD&D is more pronounced than the contribution of energy technology innovation to the deployment of renewable energy in Europe. This study provided little evidence in favor of the effectiveness of a government energy technology RD&D budget to substantially boost renewable energy in Europe. Following these results, we suggest that the knowledge of the asymmetric linkage between public energy technology innovation, RE, and CFP is a starting point to achieve win-win solutions that favor clean energy and environmental sustainability. • Optimizing the nonlinear effects of energy technology RD&D budgets over different time horizons. • Asymmetries in the responses of RE and CFP to shocks in energy technology innovation budgets. • The influences of energy technology innovation vary over different time horizons. • The public budget devoted to energy innovation is fundamental for curbing CFP rather than boosting RE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]