The Horizons magazine published by the Swiss Science Foundation cites the expertise of Dr. Joëlle Noailly in the article "Sustainability is a distant dream" published in its latest issue. Joëlle Noailly is the Head of Research at the Centre for International Environmental Studies in Geneva, and works on the role of environmental innovation. 

"New, ‘clean’ technologies will do more than just reduce the pressure on the environment", she says. They could also create new jobs, while research and development in this sector will bring an especially large surplus of knowledge from which other sectors could also profit. This is because clean technologies could find applications in many areas, including the semiconductor industry and thus in IT. “But development is too slow”, says Noailly. The ‘big players’, namely the big energy corporations, are not very innovative. After all, pollution doesn’t bring costs with it. This is a factor that the market alone cannot correct; we need political regulations instead. But the lack of innovation in certain sectors isn’t merely a result of the regulatory framework: it also comes down to mentality. “The impact of regulations has to be studied more intensely. A lot of research is already being carried out, but we now need fine-tuning between the different instruments."

Read the full article here.