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

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. Since 2013, Italy has launched several initiatives in order to address the societal challenges the country is encountering. The important initiatives to be addressed are the new 2020 National Energy Strategy and a special fund for youth employment in the green-economy sector. Moreover, the national regulatory framework for renewable energies and energy saving was recently updated. Furthermore, the Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research (MIUR) issued a national position on an ageing society, to address the challenges arising from the ageing of the Italian population. In the ERA roadmap for Italy, under specific objective 2a, it has been noted that a joint ministerial governance framework for research on grand societal challenges will be set up that will be run by a steering board to coordinate national and EU research programmes on Grand Societal Challenges. The objective of this body will be to develop strategies and match funding schemes for shared EU priorities and national specialisations, in view of optimizing transnational research and innovation investments on Grand Challenges.