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Greening of the Innovation System? Opportunities and Obstacles for a Path Change towards Sustainability: The Case of Germany

A sustainable economy requires a path change of economic development. The political and societal task is a transition to a new path consisting of more environmentally friendly technologies, products and consumption patterns. Technological and social environmentally oriented innovations play a key role in this transition. However, an analytical approach to meet these challenges has to go beyond the usual economic approach to the topic of environmental innovation that mainly focuses on the appropriate instruments of environmental policy. Instead, the greening of the innovation system has to be put on the agenda. To explore opportunities and obstacles of such a strategy in a globalised world economy, the empirical part of the paper draws on an analysis of the "greening" of the German innovation system and a sectoral case study of the automobile industry.