Towards Green Transition: case studies in EU regions

Many EU regions now feel the need to adopt more mission-oriented approaches to challenges like Green Transition - representing an evolution from ‘technology-push’ type policies commonly embodied on the first generation of S3. The ambition they increasingly share for post-2020 is to design and implement transformative innovation policies, which seek not only to increase rates of innovation and its diffusion, but also to add directionality to innovation efforts towards expected societal impacts. This ambition calls for changes in governance and in tools used in the smart specialisation context, as well as in broader national and regional innovation policies. 
​​​​​​​Source: JRC Publications Repository - Towards Green Transition in EU regions (europa.eu)

Five regions from across the European Union have been analysed representing a diversity of approaches to using S3 for Green Transition: the Basque Country in Spain, the Centro region in Portugal, the region of East & North Finland, the region of Western Macedonia in Greece and the region of West Netherlands.

 The Study Basque Country is now pursuing Green Transition in line with a recently renewed and deeply consensual strategic vision, through an innovation ecosystem of considerable institutional ‘thickness’.

Attempts to introduce green project funding criteria, as part of S3 alignment conditions, have not been fruitful because of the overwhelming imperative to simply obtain sound projects for financing. Centro’s S3 for 2021-2027 nevertheless represents a significant step forward, on paper, for innovation-led Green Transition.

Conscious of the oversized carbon footprint associated with its peripherality, the region is progressively transforming its main resource-based value chains - wood, metal and minerals - towards greener products and processes.

Innovation-led Green Transition is obviously taken seriously in the region as a primary engine for future growth and there is a strong ecosystem to support it.

Western Macedonia presents the classic case of a region locked into a dominant industry of the past, now facing a radical Green Transition.