Environmental Technologies and Eco-innovation in the Czech ...

1 | Environmental Protection Policy
Environmental protection policy has been one of the priorities of the world’s
most developed countries and all important international bodies (UNO, OECD,
EU) for several decades. The most burning global problem is currently the risk of
climate change. There are more problems, though – the availability of water, air
pollution, increasing waste production, reduced biological diversity, deforestation,
desertification and others.
Environmental protection is generally perceived as a part of a wider concept of
sustainable development that tries to find equilibrium between economic growth,
social cohesion and a corresponding quality of the environment. Most environmental
problems are related to human activities aimed at economic growth and securing
social cohesion. Consequently, we must find solutions that will satisfy the population’s
justified requirements to increase the material levels and general quality of life.
Environmental technologies, i.e. technologies with minimal environmental impacts,
are the principal way to achieve this objective.
Currently, the global community feels threatened by the impacts of climate
change. In its climatic and energy package of measures, the EU adopted an ambitious
goal to decrease its emissions of greenhouse gases by 20% by 2020 compared to
2005. The decrease should be reached by supporting energy savings and the maximum
possible usage of renewable and alternative sources.
The events at the beginning of 2009 showed, however, that energy security (selfsufficiency)
of the EU is an equally important problem because the EU has to import
most of its primary energy sources and this dependency is likely to deepen in the
coming years.
In addition to the risk of climate change and the lack of energy security, many EU
member states, including the Czech Republic, must face other environmental problems,
in particular air pollution by suspended particles and ground-level ozone, rising
quantities of waste, the chemicalization of the environment etc. A problem that
receives less attention but is still of utmost importance is EU resource security.
Taking into consideration all of the aforementioned problems, the importance of
environmental technologies becomes increasingly clear. These are technologies that
have a smaller environmental impact than comparable technologies. They consume
less energy and resources and generate a lower amount of greenhouse gas emissions
and air-polluting substances, less waste water and solid waste.