Today CO2 emissions produced by the developing world exceed those from developed countries while most of the investment and know how surrounding green technology is concentrated in the developed world, with 60% in Japan, Germany and the US alone. Green technology will be crucial to curbing greenhouse gases emissions from developing countries. This represents one of the major challenges of a future international climate change agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Beginning this April, the Graduate Institute’s Centre for International Environmental Studies (CIES) will host a project entitled “Greenspill: Green Spillovers from Multinationals in Developing Countries” headed by Joëlle Noailly who has been a fellow at the Centre for the past year. As part of this two year project, supported by an Intra-European Marie Curie Fellowship grant, Joëlle Noailly will study the role of multinational firms in the diffusion of green technologies to developing countries. Economic literature has long recognised the role of multinationals in the transfer of technologies to developing countries, but green technologies have rarely been studied in this context.

The Greenspill project will specifically examine the number of foreign green patents in developing countries as well as the impact of green technology transfers by multinationals on the energy productivity of receiving countries. It will also lay out the policy implications of the role multinationals play in the international diffusion of green technologies.

Joëlle Noailly holds a PhD in environmental economics from the Free University of Amsterdam. Her research interests include green innovations, climate change policy, the co-evolution of economic and ecological systems, and the role of social norms for the management of common-pool resources.

Find out more about the Centre for International Environmental Studies at the Graduate Institute.

Learn more about the Institute’s other research projects.