Industrial policy of increasing resource efficiency and the achievement of the sustainable development goals

• Main Author: Dmitry O. Skobelev
• Format: Article
• Language: Russian
• Published: Ural State University of Economics 2021-01-01
• Series: Journal of New Economy
• Online Access: http://jne.usue.ru/ru/2020/934

Global trends in economic development definitively reflect priorities of the sustainable development. Over recent decades the global economy has enjoyed a successfully functioning mechanism for balancing economic and resource and environmental priorities based on the concept of the Best Available Techniques (BAT). The research aims to formulate the industrial policy on modernising resource-intensive industries with regard to the BAT principles and involvement of the secondary resources in economic cycles. The author suggests taking these technologies as standards based on which regulators develop obligatory requirements for industry, determine directions and target indicators of reforms. This will allow motivating enterprises to innovate, launch and implement programmes for production modernisation. Methodologically, the research relies on the theories of economic growth, system efficiency, non-cooperative games, technological waves, resource management, and the concept of sustainable development. The author employs analysis and synthesis methods to ensure a systematic and complex approach to framing the industrial policy on increasing resource efficiency. The researcher elaborates on the content of the environmental industrial policy of the Russian Federation (EIP) according to which it is a horizontal tool of industrial policy meant to maintain the improvement of resource efficiency both at microeconomic and macroeconomic levels by introducing BAT and bringing secondary resources into economic cycles. Instead of supporting an unlimited use of natural resources, the state centres its attention on the implementation of new technologies and solutions that maintain the recycling of the secondary resources. Such industrial policy is in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It promotes economic development, industrialisation and innovations, favours transition to responsible models of production and consumption and reduction of the negative impact on the environment. To evaluate the effectiveness of the environmental industrial policy, the researcher suggests considering resource efficiency as a parameter measured in the natural units (consumption of non-renewable resources). In addition, the paper presents the results of the case study demonstrating practical implementation of the EIP tools for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals.