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

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 Danish government targets strategic change and sustainable innovation in a number of sectors, such as resource efficiency and raw materials. In Denmark without garbage (2) – strategy for reducing resource consumption’ the government sets its sight on two crosscutting themes: a) a resource effective private sector and b) green consumption. This is supplemented by a number of under-lying focus areas: Food waste, Construction, retail goods. The aim is to drive sustainable growth and substantial savings forward by encouraging sustainable innovation and thus growth in regard to resource efficiency and the use of raw materials.