Ole Erik Hansen

Ecological modernisation and institutional transformations in the Danish textile industry

Abstract In the 1990s Danish environmental policy was characterised by an endeavour towards ecological modernisation. Based on studies of environmental programs and enterprise responses this article examines how the Danish textile industry has related to this modernisation process, and how the institutional setting and environmental practices of this industry have been transformed. This transformation is understood as a reflexive process where enterprises have responded strategically to programs and institution building based on the national ecological modernisation strategy. The paper reveals how this process has resulted in the construction of new actors and environmental perceptions in the industry, a new technological selection milieu, and the building of new competencies within the enterprises and their network. The study presents evidence for the industry’s enhanced environmental capability, but it also identifies closures, which may not converge with a plea for more radical environmental improvements.

Environmental Policy and Environment-oriented Technology Policy in Denmark

In Denmark the executive power of the government has been administered under a ministerial system since the first constitutional act of 1849. Today, the Danish government encompasses 18 ministries. The two most central ministries with respect to environmental policy (EP) and technology policy (TP) are the Ministry of Environment, established in 1971, and the Ministry of Trade and Industry, which has existed since 1908. A general industry policy to promote certain structural and technological inventions and innovations has existed in Denmark to various degrees since the beginning of the twentieth century. Several R&D, information, and standardisation institutions were established during the last century along with a number of taxation, subsidy, and service schemes (Christiansen, 1988). However an explicit policy area concerning TP did not come into being until the beginning of the 1970s, and an environment-oriented TP was first launched in 1985–1986. In terms of an EP, some health orders and regulations over nuisance and discharges into urban watercourses date back to the middle of the nineteenth century, the first law on nature preservation was passed in 1917, and the first act concerning urban planning and development was passed in 1925. However, a genuine policy on environmental protection started as late as 1972 with the first Environmental Protection Act, and the establishment of the Ministry of Environment that covered all fields of EP. Since then, a comprehensive set of regulatory, monitoring, research, and subsidising institutions have been developed within the ministry. A consensus-oriented policy style ensured an economic-technological concern in environmental regulation from the start, as Danish industry and trade organisations were consulted on standards and the enactment of new initiatives. Nevertheless, it could be argued as to when a deliberate technology orientation for EP started. Besides an investment scheme for purification treatment utilities in 1975, it was only in 1985–86 that a number of R&D and innovation programmes on clean technology were started. Accordingly, we will, in what follows, focus on EP and TP and their respective crossover since the mid 1980s.1

Policy recommendations and stakeholder identification in supporting a new category of biomass CHP project in Thailand through CDM

This paper suggests a new category of CDM projects to be developed, which includes several different types of energy supply and demand activities. The CDM project exemplified here has the capacity to assist in a transformation of the energy supply system in Asia, considering Thailand in this paper. The new category of CDM projects is not yet implemented, but here suggested on the basis of thorough analysis of a community of SMEs located in an Industrial Park in Thailand. The paper shortly presents a small scale biomass Combined Heat and Power plant (CHP) with supply of district heating, and outline the benefits obtained in this specific community applying the new energy supply system. To support the implementation of such transformative energy technologies and systems, and thus to disseminate the project idea in Thailand, the paper suggests a whole range of policy recommendations, which could support such type of energy system development within the framework of CDM. A stakeholder identification is also carried out, with the purpose of identifying CDM project ‘carriers’ for supporting the implementation of this type of CDM projects in Thailand. The specific case addressed in this paper illustrates among others that heat demand within Thai SMEs could be reduced by 36 %, and solely be based on biomass waste from the community. Also, important stakeholders to support such energy system development in Thailand are identified.

Textile-finishing industry

This chapter focuses on the adoption of innovations that reduce the environmental effects of textile dyeing and printing. The traditional textile-finishing process with reactive dyes causes considerable harmful emissions due to low fixation ratios (about 60 per cent). The effort to reduce the amount of dyes in the wastewater takes different routes. One is substituting the traditional reactive dyes with highly reactive dyes that have a fixation ratio of about 90 per cent. Another route is optimising the consumption of dyes by installing computer-controlled equipment. This chapter discusses adoption processes referring to both options.

Country-specific aspects of adoption behaviours

The telephone survey (see chapter 4) brought to light country differences in the way new technologies are adopted. This chapter discusses such differences. It follows the elements of the Innovation Triangle: business competence, environmental orientation and network involvement.

Printing industry (pre-press)

The printing industry has experienced radical changes of technology during the last decades. Lead has been replaced by computer-based technologies and reprographic processes and the functions in the pre-press have, during this process, gradually been digitalised. Today Computer to Film is standard and average practice.

Towards a heuristic model of adoption

The current environmental problems caused by industry stem from the accumulation of effects, which at some point in time appear to exceed the critical boundaries of the ecosystems. It is this cumulative effect, contributed to by the activities of a multiplicity of industrial plants, which is difficult to control and likely to place limits on future industrial development unless great attention is paid to the defining and achieving of economically and ecologically sustainable pathways.

The Innovation Triangle

The case reports have examined the individual adopter’s strategy, competences and network relations as main determinants of the process of adoption. In those cases where the focal companies were first movers or early adopters (frontier technology and best practice), the adoption required a capacity to change strategy, to develop new competences and network relations.

Actors and factors of the adoption process

In previous chapters the case study materials have been used to identify the main features of the adoption process, leading to the Innovation Triangle and a testing of two gen eral hypotheses on the adoption behaviour of SMEs. This chapter goes deeper into the actors and factors of the adoption process, basing itself on a text analysis of the 100 interviews conducted within the framework of the case studies. This chapter follows its own approach by abstracting from specific contexts created by distinguishable technologies, sectors or countries. It is assumed that phenomena arising from a particular adoption process may have a broader meaning. It is up to the reader (preferably with the previous chapters in his or her mind) to assess the broader significance of what has been observed.

Cross-sector Analysis

Chapter 2 has generated a number of insights which have been used to structure the protocol for the case studies. Moreover, the analysis of the case studies could be based on them. The following propositions can be defined which reflect these insights: • The kind of innovations which SMEs adopt, depends on their systemic competence (in particular their business competence and their strategic orientation) as well as on their external relations. • For a single company, the adoption of cleaner technology will be an innovation that involves a strategic process and a learning process. This may necessarily lead to changes in competence, strategic orientation and external network relationships. • Compared with large companies, SMEs have a limited flexibility to implement such changes and have a limited capability to further develop their competences. • In spite of the limited innovative capacities of individual SMEs, adoptions may take place quite frequently because of a broader setting which promotes such adoptions. In particular, industry-specific conditions or technology-specific policies may explain why certain technologies are being introduced.