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

● permits to operate equipment and to conduct activities influencing the environment
according to the relevant laws on components of the environment (e.g. the Act on air
protection, the Act on water, the Act on waste),
● integrated permission (pursuant to the Act on the integrated prevention),
● quantitative requirements at the national level (e.g. the Kyoto obligation, national
emission ceilings, reduction in the quantity of biologically degradable waste
deposited into landfills).
Economic tools are applied both directly and indirectly, and as positive and negative
stimuli. Direct financial support (positive stimulus) occurs mainly in the public sector
by channelling money flows so that they encourage the spreading of environmental
technologies in facilities operated by the public sector and a higher demand on the
public sector for environmentally beneficial products and services and for ecoinnovation.
An important stimulus is the appropriate management of state funded
research and development projects. Support from public sources can at last be provided
to citizens (e.g. subsidies for changes to heating or building insulation).
Crucial economic tools are environmentally friendly public contracts that can
strongly encourage the development and application of environmental technologies
and create a market with eco-innovations. The entire life cycle of the technology,
products and services can be considered in the decision-making process.
Indirect economic stimulation (positive as well as negative) focuses only on
the private sector respecting the principle that, in general, it should support the
installation of environmental technologies (especially in areas that are not governed
by normative tools) and to fill the gap between the legal requirements and the
possibilities of advanced environmental technologies. In practice, they can be
accelerated depreciation, classifying a larger share of investment into science and
development into eligible costs for tax purposes, the possibility of creating a reserve
for future environmental investments, reduction of a lower VAT rate or waiving fees for
pollution of the environment or their parts.
The tools of economic stimulation are prominent in the area of energy production
from renewable resources and to a lesser degree in the production of heat from
renewable resources.
Indirect support can be used for making environmentally beneficial products and
services more attractive to citizens (e.g. a lower VAT rate).
In the Czech Republic, the following economic tools are used to support
environmental technologies and eco-innovations:
● tax relief (e.g. a lower VAT rate for bio-fuels, VAT tax exemption for research and
development projects, eligibility of science and research expenses for tax purposes,
exemption from tax for solid fuels),
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