Sustainable Innovation across Key Sectors and Societal Challenge 5: Insights from and for United Kingdom

The European Union (EU) targets growth based on smart, sustainable and inclusive economies, which can be promoted through profound changes in the European economic sectors largely spurred by the increasing importance and penetration of ICT throughout the European societies. Opportunities for industrial sectors to renew themselves are largely provided by sustainable innovations. This policy brief looks at the sectoral relevance of the SI initiatives collected in the CASIPEDIA against the challenges of climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials. The policy brief discusses how key policy developments at the national level are related to SI and connects the sectoral analysis on SC5 with policy developments at the national level. The UK Government targets many fields that are underpinned by sustainable innovation as evident within the government’s Renewable Energy Roadmap (2011) where the policy focuses on particular technologies that according to market evidence had the greatest potential to help the UK meet 2020 renewable energy targets. Based on CASIPEDIA analysis, UK research on and the development of renewable energy merits attention in the field of climate action, while manufacturing should better consider environmental innovations and agriculture could benefit from considering raw materials and resource efficiency.