You can be green and grow

A greener lifestyle is not inimical to economic growth, says Adrian Smith, author of a new report on how green initiatives are triggers for innovation. Radical activists have triggered innovations that are helping moves in a more sustainable direction, he says.

Long seen as the bane of rational economic progress, these green pioneers turn out to have been a key source of ideas that have seeded new industries in areas such as food, housing and energy. Rather than dismissing activists as hopelessly idealistic, mainstream business and policy should recognise how they create a diversity of options for sustainability.

“Activists often struggle to keep projects going and fail to produce the radical transformations they originally envisaged,” says Smith. “This lack of breakthrough inclines them (and others) to under-estimate the effect of their ideas. But we found that although their influence is more subtle and beyond their control, it is still hugely significant in many cases.”

The research, funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council,  and carried out at the University of Sussex, examined three radical niches; wind energy, organic food and eco-housing and shows the value of “green niche” initiatives in influencing mainstream activities.

Keeping ideas alive

In the case of wind power, for example, activists kept the idea of wind power alive during its wilderness years in the 1970s and 1980s when it was ignored or actively opposed by those involved in mainstream power provision. The idealists envisaged small-scale off-grid autonomous systems that were community owned. The mainstream appropriation of wind power has resulted in large wind farms connected both to the grid and to the commercial market.

Similarly, in food production, green thinking demanded sustainable local food economies based around organic farming. “These ideas were transformed into an organic food industry, when mainstream farmers, food processors and large retailers perceived the potential commercial advantage of going green,” says Smith.

Green ideas for housing including the use of environmentally friendly, reclaimable materials, low-energy buildings and self-build in small communities, have also had an influence on mainstream builders.

“The fact is that elements of radical niche thinking do get adopted and incorporated,” says Smith. “Radical green niches create diversity for when the mainstream runs into trouble, as it is at the moment over climate change.”

“Whilst not all of the idealists’ ideas turn out to be a model for wider changes in the short term, they are important sources of innovation. And as the mainstream moves, activists re-radicalise, adapt to the new mainstream, and seek to shift it on again.”