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Energy Procedia 104 (2016) 165 – 170

CUE2016-Applied Energy Symposium and Forum 2016: Low carbon cities & urban
energy systems

Towards eco-city: the role of green innovation.

Jipeng Fei a,Ying Wang a,Yue Yang a,Shiyuan Chena, Qiang Zhia*
a School of Government, Central University of Finance and Economics,Beijing,100081

Abstract

Green innovation is fundamental for the transition of city towards eco-city. It enables shifts in the
trajectory of city in many different ways. This paper classified green innovation into three types of
innovation: green technological innovation; green institutional innovation and green business-model
innovation. Under each type of innovation, we go further analysis the working mechanism and the effect
to construction of eco-city. Also, this paper highlight some research gap in current study.
© 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
© 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Selection
Peer-reviewand/or peer-review of
under responsibility under responsibility
the scientific of CUE
committee of the Applied Energy Symposium and Forum, CUE2016: Low carbon
cities and urban energy systems.
Keywords: green innovation; transition; eco-city

1. Introduction

With increasing concerns about the climate change and energy crisis, it is an tendency for cities all
over the world to transit from conventional ones to eco-cities. Eco-city” or “green city”, can be defined in
various aspects. The UN Environment Program (2012) claims “the key to sustainability lies in the concept
of eco-city”. What differentiates the eco-city with conventional city is the urban environmental quality
and livability which possess the following characters: compact, mixed-used developments, low-energy
transportation, renewable energy generation and a reduced overall ecological footprint. Other
international organization such as World Bank and Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development are inclined to define it as eco-city as a policy-goal with the concept of “green economy” or
ecological modernization.˄World Bank. 2010˗Hammerˈ2011˅
Green innovation, a branch of innovation study, means the innovation can reduce the assumption of
natural energy and improve the energy efficiency that plays such an essential role in the development of
society as well as the transition of urban environment. Nevertheless, relatively less attention has paid in

* Corresponding author: Zhi Qiang E-mail address: zhiqiangthu@qq.com

1876-6102 © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Applied Energy Symposium and Forum, CUE2016: Low carbon cities
and urban energy systems.
doi:10.1016/j.egypro.2016.12.029
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this field from scholars and the mechanism of innovation remains large poorly understand. What’s more,
current literatures of green innovation primarily focus on the innovation process itself or its economic
effect instead of an overall review on its ecological effect to eco-city transition. For example, Sagar(2006)
points out that R&D investment cannot result in the innovation in energy sector straightforward in many
cases. Based on empirical data from 124 companies, Chiou(2011)draw the conclusion that implementing
green innovation and green supply chain can help enhance companies ’competitive advantages facing the
challenge in global market.
.Following the paradigm of traditional innovation theory, this paper divides green innovation into
three types of innovation: green technological innovation; green institutional innovation and green
business-model innovation. The definition of three types of green innovation will be explicated clearly in
following parts.

Technological

Green
innovation
Business-model Institutional

In the following part, part 2 &3&4 are the analysis of three types of green innovation. Part 5 is the
discussion about the gaps existed in current study and conclusion of this paper..

2. Technological innovation

The green Technological innovation can be divided into three different types if categorized by the
effect: (1) Energy conservation (2) Emission reduction (3) Direct improvement on environment quality,
Under each type of innovation, specific examples will be demonstrated to help explain how these
innovations help achieve the goal of eco-city.
2.1 Energy conservation
Green technologies innovation that increase resource efficiency (typically fossil fuel combustion
efficiency) includes reduce fuel loss, mixing fuel and oxygen intensively, adding additives or catalytic,
etc. These technologies can enhance output or effects with the same amount of fuel, thus achieve energy
conservation. Another branch of technologies innovation help reduce energy loss to conserve energy that
means reducing the impact on the system from the outside. For instance, (Manz, H., S. Brunner, and L.
Wullschleger, 2006) investigated heat transfer through evacuated triple glazing, a perspective innovation,
and found that it could significantly reduce heat gain and heat loss from the outside if applied to a
building. Another research conducted by (Liu, 2006) showed that solar reflective roofs have a higher
ability of reflecting sunlight, thus are able to maintain a lower surface temperature and inhibit heat
conduction into the building. And according to (Balaras, C. A., et al., 2000) .Adding thermal insulation
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(e.g. extruded polystyrene) in walls, roof and floor could reduce energy consumption of the building by
20–40%.
2.2 Emission reduction
The Introduction of renewable energy including wind power, hydropower, solar power, geothermal
power and bio energy is the main source of emission reduction. Among these renewable energies, solar
power, hydropower and wind power are usually abundant, and the generating process does not produce
waste products that are greenhouse gases or cause acid rain. Furthermore, these technologies are
commonly applied to generation of electricity, which as well is an alternative of fossil fuels. Geothermal
energy can be used to heating systems (direct use), for generation of electricity, and for use in geothermal
heat pumps; and the operations neither pollute the air nor contribute to global warming.
Pollution control technology is also an important innovation in emission reduction. Methods of
pollution control can be divided into three types: pre-procedure control, in-procedure control and post-
procedure control; and the practices are usually chemical. A typical method is adding additives. It was
found that the release concentration of NOܺ and SO2 was lower than the raw coal after adding coal
burning additives (Wang, Zhiyong, et al., 2016) .An example of post-procedure control is vapor recovery
tower, which can recover the vapors of gasoline or other fuels so that the gas do not escape into the
atmosphere. It is often done at filling stations or chemical industries in order to reduce noxious and
potentially explosive fumes and pollution.
2.3Direct improvement on environment quality
Purification may include water purification and air purification. As effective and efficient
approaches for water purification, Fenton’s reagent, ozonation, electrochemical and photocatalytic
methods have been widely studied and applied in different aspects and have been reviewed by several
articles. (LI, Dapeng, 2009.) As for air purification, there are chemical methods such as using TiO2 as
catalyst (Levine L, Coutts J, Richards J, et al. 2012.), biological methods such as Soil-based biofiltration
(Nelson M, Bohn H L. 2011) , physical methods such as photocatalytic reactors (Birnie M, Riffat S,
Gillott M. 2006), etc.
Remediational technique :chemical methods such as Environmental mineral materials(EMM) (Liu Y.
2011.), physical methods such as solar photocatalytic (Dubois K D, Li G. 2013.) and biological methods
such as bioremediational technique (Liu N, Yang Y L. ,2005.) as a new concept that can cure the
damaged environment to improve the environment quality directly.

3. Institutional innovation

Institutional innovation is novel, useful and legitimate change that disrupts, to varying degrees, the
cognitive, normative, or regulative mainstays of an organizational field.˄Ryan Raffaelli,2013˅.
We can classified these innovation into two dimension: government and social norms.
3.1 Government
The keynote of institutional innovation on government dimension is its compulsion, which means it can
directly limit the behavior of people in energy use or environment protection, so this part is mainly about
policies, laws and projects that governments make. From 1980 to 2001, China was able to limit energy
demand growth to less than half of GDP growth. This was achieved through very aggressive energy-
efficiency programs organized by the central government working closely with provincial and municipal
authorities. Lo(2014) critically review China's REEE policies in six sectorDŽGovernment exert its
influence by institution innovation in following aspects: (1) tight oversight of industrial energy use,
including monitoring requirements for large industrial energy users in support of energy quotas as well as
closing of inefficient facilities and promotion of efficient technologies; (2) financial incentives, initially
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grants and later low-interest loans for energy-efficiency investments and cogeneration; (3) information
services at the national, provincial, and local levels, including the creation of over two hundred energy
conservation service centers; (4) research and development (at modest funding levels) and demonstration
projects (at more significant levels)(Sinton et al., 1999; Sinton and Fridley, 2000; Wang et al., 1995).
3.2 Social norms
Since social norms can change people’s behavior on energy use, we call it “social potential”(Mithra
Moezzi ,Kathryn B. Janda,2014). Much of the central attention in current work on building energy use
focuses on changing the behavior of individuals around a fixed set of things and energy services. This
work envisions policy interventions for reducing energy use that rest on motivating people to act on
potential monetary savings or to prioritize contributing to the global good. These perspectives largely
omit consideration of higher scale and more intricate social contexts, professional cultures, and
expectations that shape the activities, habits, and practices behind energy use.
Beyond individuals, communities, and organizations, we suggest social potential as a formulation that
complements and transcends the technical and behavioral savings potential concepts underpinning much
of today’s building energy efficiency policies, programs, and research.

4. Green business-model innovation

Green business-model innovation, is the innovation in the whole business cycle including the design,
produce, supply and end-use of commercial product that can reduce the energy cost in the society and
increase the profit for the company at the same time. Green-business innovation can be classified into
three main categories: green product innovation; green process innovation; and green managerial
innovation (Chen et al., 2006; Chen, 2008). The green innovation is positively associated with corporate
competitive advantage called green core competencies (Chen, 2008). The product that meeting the
customers’ demand and the environmental requirement can stand out in the market to make more profit
for the company. Business, as the most active part in the city life, the green innovation of which is aimed
to implement green management programs effectively to improve a plant’s environmental performance
(King and Lenox, 2000). So the green business-model innovation can definitely lead to an eco-city.
4.1 Green producing innovation
Green producing innovation, aimed to lower energy-cost in producing process and the end-use of
product, refers to the R&D process in the producing procedure, including the efficient use of raw
materials and find new ways of translating waste into saleable products (Porter and Van der Linde, 1995).
Green products with private environmental benefits for customers will stimulate more consumer demand
(Krammerer 2009), which directly help to increase the company’s profit.
Indicators in green producing innovation and how to organize these indicators effectively are
important. Some opinions consider energy-efficient is the fundamental impact on product innovation, and
the car industry is one of those markets which results in the low/zero-emission vehicles (Thornton, 1999).
While others thought new product innovation revolves products marketed partly on the basis of their
environmental performance. Smita and Mark (2003) raise an environmental R&D model taking the time
effects, abatement costs, and propensity to patent, capital intensity, international pressure, industry size,
market structure and monitoring into account. Gatenby and Foo (1990) thought the essence of new
product design lies in adding core attributes and auxiliary attributes to satisfy the customers and other
stakeholders. They developed a process to select an appropriate set of product attributes named “design-
for-X”, where the “X” represents a specific set of product attributes, such as gaseous, quality, or safety.
4.2Green managerial innovation
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Green management, taking the environmental responsibility of the company into account, refers to a
plant’s institutionalization of internal environmental management practice (Zhu et al., 2008). Green
management innovation is aimed to implement management programs effectively which has an indirectly
influence on the environment and can also bring the company more profit.
One of the green managerial innovations is green supply chain management (GSCM). Bowen(2001)
defined the GSCM as a buying firm’s plans and activities that integrate environmental issues into SCM in
order to improve the environmental performance of suppliers and customers. Rudolf and Cristina (2011)
put five potential drivers of green supply management based on Germany company, and they thought the
influential factors are: internal environmental management, green purchasing, cooperation with customers,
eco-design practices, and investment recovery. Rao and Holt (2005) conducted empirical research on
GSCM practices and their relationship between competitiveness and economic performance. Their
research showed that implementing GSCM can improve a company’s competitiveness and economic
performance.
4.3Green consumption innovation
The customers’ demand also have an impact on the companies green innovation, which directly
reflect the reasonable amount needed of product to minimize the cost of energy. A company called
OPOWER takes a program to send Home Energy Report letters to residential utility customers.
Comparing their electricity use to that of their neighbors, the average program reduces energy
consumption by 2.0%. The program provides additional evidence that non-price interventions can
substantially and cost effectively change consumer behavior ( Hunt Allcott ,2010). Attached with the
internet technology, such as Uber, the company can quickly get information about the customers’ demand.
There are insufficient literature in this research field.

5. Discussion and Conclusion

There are several major gaps in current literature. (1) Little attention has been paid on the interaction
between different kinds of green innovation. such as the response of technological change to environment
policy or how business-model innovation push the initiation and implement of new institution.(2)The
research for green business-model role and green institutional innovation are in short as they will
influence the way citizen live and think towards an eco-city in a subtle way. (3)the effect of green
innovation should be better measured , whether In quantity or in quality. (4)More empirical study
especially case-study should be added in this field.
This paper provide a clear literature structure of green innovation and the role it plays in constructing
eco-city. The green innovation can be divided into three types of innovation: green technological
innovation; green institutional innovation and green business-model innovation which are the driving
force towards the eco-city. Among these green innovations, institutional innovation and business-model
innovation will increasingly significant in the near future while the relevant research are insufficient.
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