Technology Innovation Strategy of the U.S.
EPA External Discussion Draft, January 1994

EPA Program/Office: EPA

Document Number:	NA
Document Type:	Strategy Document
Date:	1994
Contact:	Strategy Committee Innovative Technology Council Mail Code 2111 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Washington, DC 20460

 

Preface

This draft Technology Innovation Strategy was prepared by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Innovative Technology Council, an agency-wide coordinating committee that reports to David M. Gardiner, EPA Assistant Administrator for Policy, Planning and Evaluation. It is being circulated widely to invite suggestions and comments from persons knowledgeable in this area and from the general public. EPA will redraft this document on the basis of input and use it to guide the implementation of its technology innovation programs. Since this draft document is subject to change, it should not be cited as reflecting Agency policy.

In its current version, the Technology Innovation Strategy outlines a broad range of actions designed to foster the development and adoption of innovative technology on behalf of the nation's environmental protection goals. Since EPA will not be able to undertake simultaneously all the identified actions, comments from readers that suggest priorities among them will be especially useful and are encouraged.

A description of projects being undertaken by EPA in Fiscal Year 1994 under the President's Environmental Technology Initiative is available in a companion document entitled "Environmental Technology Initiative: Fiscal Year 1994 Program Plan" (EPA/542//K-93/003). It can be obtained, along with additional copies of this Technology Innovation Strategy (EPA/542/K-93/002) by calling the U.S. General Printing Office at: (202) 783-3238, or faxing a request to: (202) 512- 2250. An order form is included at the end of this document.

Comments and suggestions on this Technology Innovation Strategy should be sent to:

Strategy Committee
Innovative Technology Council
Mail Code 2111
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Washington, DC 20460

Table Of Contents

Executive Summary

• Summary of EPA's Four Objectives
  
• Basic Operating Principles
  

Objective #2: Strengthen the Capacity of Technology Developers and Users to Succeed in Environmental Technology Innovation

Objective #3: Strategically Invest EPA Funds in the Development and Commercialization of Promising New Technologies

Objective #4: Accelerate Diffusion of Innovative Technologies at Home and Abroad

Proposed EPA Strategy

Introduction

Technology innovation is indispensable to achieving our national and international environmental goals. Available technologies are inadequate to solve many present and emerging environmental problems or, in some cases, too costly to bear widespread adoption. Innovative technologies offer the promise that the demand for continuing economic growth can be reconciled with the imperative of strong environmental protection. In launching this Technology Innovation Strategy, the Environmental Protection Agency aims to inaugurate an era of unprecedented technological ingenuity in the service of environmental protection and public health.

The policy and regulatory framework administered by EPA and state environmental agencies creates the primary commercial demand for environmental technologies, broadly defined to include:

• traditional end-of-pipe controls,
  
• cleaner industrial technologies that prevent pollution,
  
• monitors and instrumentation, and
  
• environmental management information technology.

However, as this framework has evolved and technology has been installed to meet its requirements, incentives for the creation and adoption of the next generation of innovative technologies have often been dampened. Permitting or compliance practices, for example, have sometimes had the unintended effect of limiting the development or adoption of more effective and economical solutions. Technology developers have confronted a range of regulatory and market-based obstacles to acceptance of their breakthrough products. Risk-averse financiers have typically preferred to invest their capital elsewhere, in more predictable sectors of the economy.

Achievement of the nation's environmental goals today and into the coming century will require more than continued reliance on existing technologies. The U.S. framework for environmental management must be adapted to ensure that incentives for the development and use of innovative technologies are strengthened. This strategy signals EPA's commitment to making needed changes and reinventing the way it does its business so that the United States will have the best technological solutions needed to protect the environment. But EPA cannot accomplish this alone. This strategy is grounded in EPA Administrator Carol M. Browner's commitment to new public-private partnerships that will unleash American inventiveness and fashion new tools for more aggressive and efficient environmental protection.

The Technology Innovation Strategy will also serve as an integrated part of the Clinton Administration's broad new technology policy, enunciated on February 22, 1993 in "Technology for America's Economic Growth: A New Direction to Build Economic Strength." That government-wide policy recognizes that industry is the primary creator of new technology and the main engine of sustained economic growth. It assigns the federal government a catalytic role in promoting the development of new technologies across a range of sectors, including semiconductors, transportation, information infrastructure, advanced manufacturing and environmental technologies, as well as converting defense technologies to civilian applications.

EPA's Technology Innovation Strategy is a unified blueprint for the Agency's efforts to stimulate the domestic environmental technology industry and expand export capacity, thereby multiplying the tools available for environmental protection both at home and abroad.

• First, it will provide guidance to EPA's base program in environmental technology, which constitutes over $100 million in fiscal year 1994 spending.

• Second, the strategy will drive spending priorities under the new EPA-led, multi-year Environmental Technology Initiative (ETI) that the President announced in February 1993. The ETI program is being funded at $36 million in fiscal year 1994 with an increase projected for FY 1995. Many of the projects will be conducted jointly with other Federal agencies, thereby bringing the extensive expertise in environmental technology across the entire Federal government to bear on the problem of stimulating innovation in the environmental technology industry.

• Third, the strategy will guide EPA's efforts to implement its part of the U.S. Government's first-ever interagency export strategy for the environmental technology sector, released in November 1993. EPA jointly produced the export strategy along with the Departments of Commerce and Energy in response to a charge from President Clinton in his Earth Day speech in April 1993. Entitled "Environmental Technologies Exports: Strategic Framework for U.S. Leadership", the strategy calls for enlisting a range of traditional trade promotion activities on behalf of the environmental technology industry. But it also recognized that these activities will not succeed in the absence of a more disciplined effort to support the domestic industry in navigating the fragmented U.S. market and building more innovative products.

Return to Table of Contents.

Objective #1: Adapt EPA's Policy, Regulatory and Compliance Framework to Promote Innovation

Stimulate the development and adoption of innovative technologies by strengthening the incentives for innovation within regulatory, permitting, compliance and enforcement programs at all levels of government, and by identifying and reducing barriers to innovation in these programs, where this is consistent with uncompromising environmental protection.

In producing innovative technology, the private sector responds to perceived market demand. However, the demand for environmental products and services is generated primarily by legislation, government policies, regulations, and practices. There is no substitute for predictable and consistent enforcement of strong environmental regulations to create a demand for environmental technology, but legislation and regulations can be developed and administered in ways that either dampen or accelerate the rate of innovation and diffusion of new technologies. EPA is in a unique position to lead in adapting the environmental management framework so that incentives for technological innovation are maintained and strengthened and that potential barriers to innovation are reduced.

Objective #2: Strengthen the Capacity of Technology Developers and Users to Succeed in Environmental Technology Innovation

Identify the non-regulatory sources of market inefficiency and failure in the environmental technology sector, and work jointly with organizations in the public and private sectors to address them. Develop and communicate timely information about high priority environmental technology gaps. Catalyze the technology development and commercialization efforts of other organizations by:

• convening partnerships;
  
• providing testbeds, analytical tools, and technical support; and
  
• standardizing testing protocols to enhance the credibility of performance data on innovative technologies.

Objective #3: Strategically Invest EPA Funds in the Development and Commercialization of Promising New Technologies

Provide direct EPA funding to develop and commercialize selected technologies that are poised to meet critical environmental needs, offer high prospects for breakthrough, and require public financial support for timely success. Technologies will be evaluated for support under two broad categories:

1. cleaner industrial technologies and practices that prevent pollution, and
   
2. control, remediation, monitoring, and other technologies that comprise the traditional environmental technology sector.

EPA's direct financial contribution to the development of environmental technology has been -- and will continue to be -- a small percentage of the total amount invested by both the private sector and other Federal agencies. Yet EPA's unique vantage point allows it to identify emerging technologies whose successful development would fill a present or anticipated regulatory and environmental need. In cases where such a need is identified and private investment in a potential technological solution is inadequate, targeted EPA funding can boost the chances for success. EPA funding will leverage rather than displace private sector funding, and be injected at critical developmental stages. Under this part of the strategy, EPA will fund or co-fund development and commercialization undertaken by private and public sector collaborators, as well as in its own and other government laboratories. Special emphasis will be given to funding cleaner technologies that show promise for preventing pollution, but spending will also be directed to control, remediation, monitoring and other technologies that fill critical gaps,including the unmet needs of small businesses.

Objective #4: Accelerate the Diffusion of Innovative Technologies at Home and Abroad

• Enhance the capacity and efficiency of public and private networks that transfer information on domestic and international market needs and the availability, performance and cost of innovative technologies.
  
• Provide technical assistance, training, education, and information management to support a more efficient marketplace in environmental technologies.
  
• Catalyze demand by promoting federal purchases of innovative technologies at home and strengthening environmental policy and regulatary frameworks abroad.

Abroad, EPA will address trans-boundary and global environmental problems affecting the United States by providing international technical assistance, training, and other capacity-building programs that strengthen environmental infrastructures and thereby expand the global market for more effective environmental technologies. EPA will emphasize multi-media approaches in its diffusion efforts to encourage the use of cleaner technologies that prevent pollution.

Return to Table of Contents.

I. Maximum Consultation with Stakeholders

EPA's draft Technology Innovation Strategy is the Agency's current blueprint for its environmental technology program. It is an evolving document that is intended to stimulate comments and assistance from all "stakeholders" in the environmental technology arena, including:

• the regulated community,
  
• technology inventors,
  
• developers and vendors,
  
• environmental advocates,
  
• investors,
  
• the academic community, and
  
• federal, state and local government agencies.

II. Coordination with Federal, State and Local Agencies

EPA will actively establish and strengthen working partnerships with other federal, state and local agencies in striving to meet its technology objectives. In selecting government partners to assist in implementing this strategy, EPA will identify the respective talents, expertise, and perspectives they can offer. In addition, EPA will offer its own expertise to other agencies in the pursuit of common technology innovation goals. For example, EPA will work with the Commerce Department, the Export-Import Bank, the Trade Development Agency, Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and other agencies with a trade related-mission to assist in assuring the success of the Administration's export promotion strategy for environmental technologies. Similarly, EPA will work closely with state environmental agencies, the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense in pursuing improved technological solutions to air and water pollution, toxic chemical use, and remediation problems at waste sites.

III. Partnership and Collaboration with the Private Sector and Academia

EPA and state environmental agencies need to become better partners with the private sector in helping to bring critical new technologies to commercialization and widespread use. For example, as proposed in this strategy, government agencies can help reduce risk for innovators in the environmental technology market by:

• convening public-private partnerships that target, collaborate, and co-fund research and development of innovative technologies;
  
• supporting their testing and demonstration so as to provide credible documentation of their performance; and
  
• improving governmental policies.

IV. Cleaner Technology Not Just Control Technology

Most conventional environmental technologies are designed expressly to control pollution at the "end of the pipe." Increasingly, the best environmental solutions involve changes in production processes, feedstocks, and product designs; many of these solutions have the intended effect of reducing pollution before it is generated, while also producing economic advantages, for example by increasing efficiency in energy and materials usage. On the other hand, many technological design choices are made each day in industry that have significant consequences for the environment but are not made expressly for environmental reasons. For instance, the design of new energy-efficient motors for use in manufacturing may not be motivated primarily by their environmental benefits, but rather by economic or other performance considerations. White House Science Advisor John Gibbons has used the terms "dark green" and "light green" to distinguish, respectively, between:

1. technologies developed to address an environmental problem (e.g., waste water treatment techniques); and
   
2. technologies whose primary stimulus was not environmental protection, but whose manufacture and use may provide environmental gains (e.g., energy-efficient motors).

V. Measuring Progress Along the Way

An integral and ongoing dimension of the Technology Innovation Strategy is the development and use of indicators and tools to benchmark EPA's progress in bringing innovative technologies to bear in solving our pressing environmental problems. In addition, analytic and economic tools can help define markets at home and abroad. Data on available technologies can be compiled to up-to-date catalogues. Monitoring, measurement, and characterization methodologies can evaluate incremental progress.

These and other techniques will be routinely employed to define successes and to calibrate adjustments that must be made to the Agency's strategy.

Return to Table of Contents.

Stimulate the development and adoption of innovative technologies by strengthening the incentives for innovation within regulatory, permitting, compliance and enforcement programs at all levels of government, and by identifying and reducing barriers to innovation in these programs, where this is consistent with uncompromising environmental protection.

Introduction:

In producing innovative technologies, the private sector responds above all to perceived market opportunities. Unlike most markets, however, the environmental technology sector is not driven primarily by consumer preferences, but by legislation and governmental regulations, policies, and practices. The U.S. environmental policy, regulatory and compliance framework has, to date, delivered the strongest and most comprehensive environmental protection in the world. However, as this framework has evolved and technology has been installed to meet its requirements, incentives for the creation and adoption of the next generation of innovative technologies have often been dampened.

Achievement of the nation's ambitious environmental goals today and in the coming century will require more than simply continuing to implement today's existing technologies. The environmental management framework must be adapted to ensure that incentives for the development and use of innovative technologies are maintained and strengthened.

In the short term, this will require EPA and state and local environmental agencies to use existing administrative authority to create incentives for innovation and reduce unnecessary barriers in rule-making, permitting, and enforcement activities. Special emphasis will be placed on promoting the development and use of technologies that prevent pollution from being created, rather than treating and controlling it at the end of the pipe. The longer term agenda includes a sustained legislative effort to identify and enact statutory changes to provide stronger incentives and reduce unnecessary barriers to technological innovation.

There is no substitute for predictable and consistent enforcement of strong environmental regulations in creating the demand for environmental technology. But regulations can be developed and administered in ways that either dampen or accelerate the rate of innovation and diffusion of new technologies. New, voluntary EPA programs that depart from the Agency's command-and-control tradition also offer opportunities for encouraging innovation on behalf of environmental protection. EPA is in a unique position to lead in addressing this complex set of issues. In fact, as EPA officials have consulted with a wide representation of individuals and groups on environmental technology over the last year, they have found strong support for the Agency to focus on making the nation's environmental management system more amenable to innovation, where this is consistent with maintaining and strengthening environmental standards.

Statement of the Problem:

Barriers to technological innovation have developed, in part, as a result of the rapid expansion of the environmental management system over recent decades and years, and the corresponding demands on federal and state governments to bring pollution under control quickly. The following are among the most significant barriers embodied in the current system.

• Technology Lock-In EPA typically bases pollution control standards on the achievable limits of available,well-demonstrated technologies. Under many of its environmental statutes, EPA examines the best technologies currently in use and promulgates standards that require all members of the regulated group to bring their performance up to the level these best technologies achieve. This ensures an effective and rapid upgrading of technology by the regulated group and levels the competitive playing field for those individuals who have already installed the better technologies.

  Even though most of these standards are technically performance-based and do not require the installation of a specific technology, the engineering community and regulated parties are reluctant to depart from using the technology on which the standard is based and which EPA describes in the control technology guidance documents accompanying the regulation.

  An innovator with a cheaper or more effective technology, therefore, can find it difficult to penetrate the market. Potential customers and their advisors are typically unwilling to risk non-compliance by using a relatively unknown and unproven technology, or anticipate inadequate economic gain to justify it. Permitting officials are similarly reluctant to risk the potential environmental consequences of approving an innovative technology. Enforcement personnel do not normally grant exceptions for businesses that make bona fide attempts to comply using innovative approaches, but fall just short of regulatory level.

  The result of this technology lock-in is that the nation has fewer technologies to choose from as it moves to the next generation of environmental protection goals. Fragmented Market Environmental problems vary widely in their severity across the country. To ensure an adequate level of protection everywhere, federal environmental programs establish uniform national standards but leave considerable discretion to the states to decide how best to implement them. Requirements may be more stringent, as needed, to achieve local and regional environmental goals. Many states in turn delegate decision-making to local environmental authorities. The result is that innovators must develop and sell their technologies in a large number of sub-markets across the U.S., rather than benefitting from the scale economies of a unified national market. This creates a complex market with varying performance requirements and regulatory processes, in which innovator difficulty estimating the market for their product and incur high marketing expenditures.

• Unpredictable Regulatory Requirements It is not unusual for the promulgation of an environmental regulation to take several years. Often, the level of environmental performance that will be required is not settled until the final rule is signed. However, once the rule is promulgated, these performance requirements typically become enforceable within a short time. In contrast, the development cycle for technological innovations is much longer, often ten years or more. The result is that rules are developed on the basis of a more limited group of technologies than is desirable.

  Without greater predictability, technology developers find it difficult to obtain financing, and run the risk of producing innovations that either over-or under-comply with the new standard. Since it is difficult to synchronize innovation and production with uncertain demand, the financial community is unable to calculate the risks of investment. Users are left with little choice but to install technologies that were already demonstrated and in use at the time the database was being gathered early in the rule-writing process. This process introduces a serious time-lag into the development and installation of efficient and effective technologies by American industry.

• Single-Media Regulations

  Single-media regulatory programs tend to favor control and remediation technologies that are tailored to reducing pollution from specific sources into one medium (air, water,land), while discouraging investments in cleaner industrial technologies that efficiently and cost-effectively reduce facility-wide pollution without transferring it across media.

  Lack of Effective Permitting of R&D and Technology Tests Permits define the terms of operation that ensure compliance with environmental protection requirements. However, most permits are not designed to allow developers to fully evaluate the performance of innovative technologies. Evaluation testing involves the operation of technologies outside optimum conditions, and may produce violations unless backup controls are used. The near absence of permitting mechanisms that both fully protect public health and the environment and allow technology developers to optimize the design of their products impedes the development and commercialization of innovative technologies.

• Adapting the Regulatory Framework to Spur Innovation: EPA's Acid Rain Control Program and Technology Innovation The U.S. in 1990 enacted a stringent market-based control program to further reduce acid rain causing sulfur dioxide emissions by 50 percent. Under this program, coal-fired power-plants can choose from a wide variety of control options in meeting their emission reduction requirements,including demand-side management programs, switching to lower-sulfur fuel, buying emissions credits and installing scrubbers. Although still in its infancy, the acid rain program, by rewarding superior performance with tradeable credits, has already led to a variety of innovations in pollution control, including major advancements in scrubber technology. For example, U.S. vendors are now guaranteeing retrofit scrubbers at 98 percent control efficiency, whereas the ability to achieve even 90 percent control at existing units was in doubt just a few years ago.

Proposed EPA Strategy:

In adapting its policies, regulations and practices to promote the development and use of innovative technologies, EPA must guard against abuse of any new flexibility it introduces to ensure that environmental protection is not compromised. While recognizing this fundamental constraint, EPA will undertake the following activities:

1. EPA will improve its regulatory and voluntary programs so as to increase the development and use of innovative technologies.
   • Seek to increase regulatory predictability, so as to give technology developers adequate lead time and to reduce investment barriers. EPA will expand the use of regulatory development processes that broaden the participation of affected parties, such as negotiated rule-making, in order to develop rules that permit the use of a wider range of technologies.

   • Incorporate provisions into its new regulations and programs that widen the range of technologies accepted for compliance. EPA will give special attention to economic incentives, such as the use of market-based instruments, in regulations so as to reward businesses that choose to exceed compliance and innovators who devise technological solutions that achieve higher levels of environmental performance.

2. EPA will streamline and expedite permit processes for R&D, testing, evaluation, and compliance use of innovative technologies.
   • Develop and implement specialized permit policies and processes for technology R&D, testing, and evaluation. These policies will be designed to allow sufficient flexibility for technology developers to determine the parameters of performance while ensuring uncompromising protection of the environment and public health.

   • Increase the flexibility of permitting processes. Streamline the review of permit applications for new and innovative technologies, affording them a higher priority.

   • Develop a system of incentives to encourage prospective users to select innovative technologies. Help make innovative technologies that have been successfully implemented more broadly available and acceptable to other users and to regulatory agencies.

   • Pilot the concept of a Permitting Reinvention Laboratory consisting of experienced permit writers from EPA and state environmental agencies to facilitate and expedite permits for innovative technologies. This laboratory would pilot new ways to incorporate innovation into permitting procedures, and identify any fundamental statutory and regulatory barriers that impede progress in this area.

   • Identify mechanisms for increasing the coordination of permitting strategies for all media across all jurisdictions and levels of government. For instance, the Western Governors Association recently initiated an effort to allow data submitted to one state to be recognized and accepted in other states, in order to provide a broader, regional market for technologies.

   • Provide training, technical support, and performance awards to permitting personnel so that they will have both the means and the incentive to promote adoption of innovative technologies.

3. EPA will make its enforcement practices more amenable to innovative technologies.
   • Strong and consistent enforcement acts as an essential impetus to investment in environmentally sound processes and technologies. EPA's enforcement policies and practices encourage regulated parties to prevent violations by increased emphasis on pollution revention. EPA currently offers flexibility in timing, for example, in enforcement settlement agreements that use innovative pollution prevention approaches to achieve compliance. EPA may also partially reduce some penalties when a violator undertakes supplemental environmental projects with environmental benefits that go beyond those required in the enforcement settlement. Creative enforcement approaches will further encourage regulated parties to consider innovative approaches to complying with regulatory standards and, in some cases, going beyond them. The following are some examples of the approaches EPA will undertake.

   • Through coordinated, new approaches to permit writing and enforcement, EPA policies will better address uncertainties about the performance of innovative technologies in the permit. This can reduce some of the more punitive consequences of violating traditional permit conditions, while not posing an unacceptable risk to public health and the environment. These EPA permits will encourage facilities to take on some of the risks inherent in innovative technologies.

   • EPA will strengthen its efforts to design multi-media approaches to compliance inspections that encourage facilities to determine whether source reduction or other innovative approaches are available to correct a potential violation or to reduce broader environmental impacts.

   • EPA policies for settling an enforcement action are now more receptive to innovation through special conditions in the final consent order or decree. These special conditions continue to compel compliance with environmental laws and punish failure, but also may allow "soft landings" if innovative technologies narrowly fail. EPA will identify pilot opportunities to use the settlement process in a way that provides defendants an incentive to correct violations through an innovative approach (e.g., by allowing more time to install an innovative technology), while also ensuring protection of public health (e.g.,by requiring a "fall-back" method to correct the violation if the new approach is not successful). Another pilot approach may be to offer penalty reductions for corrective use of an innovative technology if it results in over-compliance.

4. EPA will strengthen its collaborative efforts with state environmental agencies to support technological innovation.
   • Provide technical support, grant and contract assistance, financial support through the state grants programs, and performance recognition for state leadership in encouraging the development and use of innovative technologies.

   • Continue to work with state agencies to promote multi-media permit and enforcement processes so as to provide more flexibility for innovation.

5. EPA will consult with stakeholders in order to:
   
   1. solicit feedback on the success of the initiatives listed above;
      
   2. identify additional opportunities to adapt the current policy and regulatory framework to promote innovation; and
      
   3. where appropriate, to improve that framework through new legislation.
      
   Each of EPA's program and regional offices will sponsor focus groups to identify opportunities for, and barriers to, innovative technology. These groups will be drawn from EPA, state and local environmental agency staff, the regulated community, technology developers and suppliers, the financial community, universities, as well as the environmental advocate community.

Identify the non-regulatory sources of market inefficiency and failure in the environmental technology sector, and work jointly with organizations in the public and private sectors to address them. Develop and communicate timely information about high priority environmental technology gaps. Catalyze the technology development and commercialization efforts of other organizations by:

• convening partnerships;
  
• providing testbeds, analytical tools, and technical support;
  
• and standardizing testing protocols to enhance the credibility of performance data on innovative technologies.

Introduction:

In addition to its pivotal role in administering the regulations that drive technology innovation, EPA is well positioned to conduct a range of catalytic, non-regulatory activities in concert with the private sector and other Federal agencies that will help reduce pervasive barriers and inefficiencies in the environmental technology market. For example, the Agency will increase the venues available for testing the performance of new technologies, in order to augment the availability of credible and accessible data that is vital to an efficient market. EPA will also seek to communicate more effectively and promptly about the technology needs associated with environmental and regulatory trends, so as to provide more lead time for developers and financiers and to help close the gap between the nation's environmental needs and the ability of available technologies to meet them.

Statement of the Problem:

Objective #2 of the strategy is premised on the fundamental recognition that the environmental technology market is complex and that innovators of new environmental technologies often lack the information, skills, tools, and facilities required to move their technology from the garage to the global marketplace. On the other side of the equation, regulated parties that need to purchase new technologies may not have the analytical tools to sort out the relative benefits of alternatives. Small businesses, in particular, are at a disadvantage on both counts.

Moreover, the financial community, regulators, and the public often lack the ability to make informed decisions about innovative technologies without independently developed or verified credible data about performance, cost of performance, and range of applicability. Thus, information, skills, tools, testing protocols, and facilities provided by EPA and other Federal agencies can make the environmental technology market function more efficiently. The critical barriers to efficiency, as currently understood, by EPA can be outlined in six broad areas:

1. Lack of Credible Performance Data The environmental technology market is weakened by a lack of credible data on the cost, performance, and range of applicability of new and innovative technologies. Data must be accessible, understandable, and credible to investors, prospective users, the public, and permit writers and enforcement officials. Government can play a catalytic role in the development, verification, and widespread dissemination of objective data, and is especially well positioned to do so in this highly regulated market.

2. Lack of Testing Venues A key factor that impedes technology development and commercialization and increases the costs and risks of technology testing is a lack of venues to test pilot-scale and demonstration-scale innovative technologies. This is a primary cause of the scarcity of credible performance data noted above. Such venues must be appropriately permitted, and backup equipment is often needed to allow rigorous testing across the full range of potential operating parameters. Environmental technologies are especially dependent on appropriate testing, because they must pass regulatory muster before being widely used for compliance purposes. Such regulatory approvals often turn on the availability of credible data. This has disadvantaged many new technologies in comparison to established but often less effective technologies.

3. Lack of Guidance About The Technology Gaps That Limit Environmental Progress In most markets, the development of new products is driven by entrepreneurs who accurately predict customer demand. In the environmental technology market, however, the primary factor influencing demand is government policies and regulations. The absence of a periodic government assessment and forecast of the technology gaps that limit environmental progress contributes significantly to the difficulty of targeting investments in the development and commercialization of environmental technologies. Without a better understanding of what the future is likely to demand, two fundamental problems will continue to afflict the technology marketplace:
   
   1. technologies will not always be available to solve critical environmental problems when they are needed; and
      
   2. markets will not be available for some innovative technologies that are developed, often at considerable expense.

4. Need for Planning, Design, and Decision making Tools Planning tools to help technology designers and users identify the optimal technologies for their particular application are not fully developed and disseminated. Factoring environmental design considerations into the choice of design, feedstocks, and manufacturing process is a complex analytical task. Life-cycle costs and the efficiencies offered by cleaner technologies are often not fully understood or credited by businesses. Without more sophisticated accounting methodologies and other analytic tools for integrating environmental and productivity decisions, demand for environmental technologies that prevent pollution and heighten productivity will be dampened.

5. Inadequate Federal Government Understanding of the Environmental Technology Industry The Federal government has not, to date, given adequate attention to understanding the complex environmental technology industry. Federal agencies do collect and analyze data on national expenditures for pollution abatement, environmentally related capital investments and operating costs. This enables government officials to understand the demand-side of the equation, such as compliance costs sustained by businesses, but not the supply-side. Without greater government efforts to understand and address the constraints facing the technology suppliers, innovative technologies will not be produced at the needed rate, and the compliance costs that receive considerable attention will not be reduced. Government can only begin to tackle these problems if it becomes a more effective partner for the environmental technology industry.

   The mirror image of this problem is the private sector's limited understanding of the government's regulatory and enforcement processes that govern the development and testing of environmental technologies and limit the ultimate choices potential customers can make when selecting technologies. This problem is particularly acute for small, independent developers who cannot easily obtain this information or keep it up to date.

6. Lack of Skills, Financial Capacity, and Facilities Many technology developers possess an incomplete set of skills and other resources needed to successfully develop and commercialize environmental technologies. These may include technical or business skills, laboratories or sites for field testing, market research capabilities, or other assets. This problem is more serious in the environmental technology industry than many others since it is still a relatively new economic sector and comprises many small and independent technology developers. Without support, many promising environmental technologies may be lost.

7. Strengthening the Capacity of Industry to Make Better Environmental Technology Decisions: Design for the Environment Program During the early days of environmental regulation, many chemicals were identified as hazardous to the environment. Before they could be phased out, however, substitutes had to be found, and sometimes the latter proved worse for the environment than the original. EPA's Design for the Environment (DfE) program is a voluntary cooperative program that attempts to reduce this problem by helping industry evaluate multiple alternatives, compare their relative performance and risks to the environment in the earliest design stages, and organize collaborative efforts to develop and commercialize these innovative technological opportunities.

The printing industry project presently focuses on pollution prevention in three areas:

1. blanket washes in lithography,
   
2. screen printing, and
   
3. inks used in flexography,
   

EPA's Proposed Strategy:

1. EPA will improve the system for developing and validating technology performance data.
   • Assist in standardizing testing protocols to ensure the acceptability, quality, comparability, and transferability of performance data. Many organizations both inside and outside the federal government will be encouraged to adopt the agreed methods. Accomplishing the goal of greater standardization will involve reaching agreements about methods and protocols used in conducting tests and demonstrations for:
     
     1. gathering and analyzing test data;
        
     2. producing predictive models;
        
     3. quality assurance; and
        
     4. reporting results, including performance and cost data.
        
     Special emphasis will be placed on pollution prevention technologies and techniques for small businesses.

   • Pilot an environmental technology verification program to evaluate the claims of environmental technology vendors. This program may involve testing or demonstrations by independent third parties, national or EPA laboratories, or some combination thereof.

   • Expand existing efforts to collect, review, format, and report credible data on technology performance, particularly on a multi-media basis. In this expansion, EPA will emphasize the collection of credible information developed by others.

2. In collaboration with other Federal agencies, EPA will expand the availability of sites for safely testing and evaluating innovative technologies.
   • Work with other Federal and state agencies to expand the availability of venues to test innovative technologies safely. Both EPA and non-EPA sites, such as closing military bases and other Federal facilities, may be used. A range of locations is needed to address the differing stages of development, the varying risks of testing, and the need to test over a wide range of operating conditions. In some cases, controlled, permitted settings with backup safety and pollution control equipment will be necessary to assure safe testing and evaluation.

   • Establish procedures and criteria for the use of EPA laboratories to test and evaluate environmental technologies developed outside EPA.

3. EPA will both convene and strengthen technology partnerships. The Agency will catalyze innovation by convening new partnerships and strengthening existing ones among groups from industry, government, non-profits, and other organizations. Successful EPA programs like Design for the Environment will serve as a foundation for some of these activities. These partnerships will be designed to jointly develop and commercialize environmental technologies that have wide applicability, particularly those that prevent pollution and increase productivity. EPA will seek broad-based private sector participation, including industry associations, individual companies, and equipment suppliers. In addition to its critical role in convening partnerships, EPA may support them with partial EPA funding and facilitate their work through Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs).

4. EPA will identify and communicate information concerning priority environmental technology gaps. In concert with technology stakeholders, EPA will develop and issue a periodic multi-media assessment of the environmental technology gaps that limit environmental progress. This "National Agenda of Environmental Technology Gaps" will identify and communicate existing and anticipated technology gaps impeding progress in meeting both short and long-term environmental objectives. This ambitious need assessment will require the refinement of available models and criteria, and the development of new ones. The National Agenda report will help technology developers to better link the supply of their innovative technologies to the present and future demands of the environmental market. It will also help drive EPA's priorities for its own direct investment in the innovative technology arena.

5. EPA will increase the availability of regulatory information to the environmental technology innovation community.
   1. Availability The Agency will increase the availability of information about regulations and regulatory processes, including permitting and enforcement policies, to reduce the difficulty and risk of technology innovation and adoption. For example, EPA will more aggressively publicize information about EPA's approval processes for new and innovative monitoring methods.

   2. Supporting the Market for Innovation by Validating Technology Performance: EPA's SITE Program EPA's Superfund Innovative Technology Evaluation (SITE) demonstration program evaluates innovative technologies at sites where cleanup is required by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (Superfund) or Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). During a SITE demonstration, EPA determines an innovative technology's performance under real or simulated environmental conditions. While many private developers of innovative technology can test their equipment or process independently, the SITE program gives potential users of the new technology added assurance about costs and performance of the new technique. The purpose of the program is to bring performance credibility to innovative technologies in order to help them enter the Superfund cleanup market place.

   Developers of the technologies are then responsible for operating their innovative systems at the site. EPA is responsible for community relations at the site, testing the technology's performance, and reporting the results.

   From 1987, when the SITE program became operational, through 1992, 58 demonstration projects have been completed. An additional 90 developers are now planning or working on projects for testing. Project managers in EPA who are responsible for cleaning up new Superfund sites use the information provided through the SITE program extensively. Since 1991, innovative technologies have been chosen on more than half of the Records of Decision (ROD's) at Superfund sites. Prior to 1987, new technologies were rarely considered. A study of Region 5 projects found that savings of over $140 million were achieved in seven sites that used innovative technologies, an average cost reduction of 68% for each site.

6. EPA will strengthen its collaborative efforts with developers and users of environmental technology to reduce market barriers to innovation.
   • Establish and strengthen collaborative environmental technology R&D planning processes. These partnerships may involve industry, government agencies (federal, state, and local), non-profit organizations, and other entities. EPA will encourage wider participation in the planning of non-federal innovative technology R&D in the public and private sectors.

   • Increase Agency participation in federal interagency activities for planning innovative technology R&D. EPA can work through existing mechanisms, such as the Federal Coordinating Committee on Science, Environment and Technology (or its successor), or bilateral and multilateral mechanisms newly established for this purpose.

   • Sponsor and support centers at which technology developers can obtain assistance in nurturing an innovation through the development pipeline. These centers will emphasize assistance to smaller technology developers. Among the support the centers will provide are:
     
     1. assistance in writing business plans for innovative technologies;
        
     2. provision of scientific and engineering skills needed to develop and build pilot and prototype equipment; and
        
     3. help in locating places to test and evaluate the performance of technologies.

   • Collaborate with the private sector through the signing of Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) in order to share expertise and facilities among stakeholders in ensuring the success of critical innovations.

   • Collaborate in the development and refinement of tools for evaluating and selecting among potential technology R&D opportunities, including life-cycle analysis techniques and "design-for-the-environment" methods that integrate environmental and productivity decisions.

   • Work with other agencies and stakeholders to identify government policies outside of EPA's jurisdiction where changes might provide incentives or reduce barriers to technological innovation. Such policies might include federal, state, and local tax policies, accounting policies, and codes and practices.

7. EPA will consult with stakeholders to develop greater institutional understanding of the market barriers to innovation and commercialization of environmental technologies.
   • Increase efforts to understand the barriers that impede the development and commercialization of the products and services needed for environmental improvement. This will enable EPA to better engage all of the key stakeholders in the environmental technology marketplace and to target its role in the technology innovation process to achieve maximum impact. One approach EPA will use to accomplish this is to co-sponsor and provide leadership in inter-governmental conferences, symposia, and focus groups.

   • Working with other federal agencies, EPA will increase its efforts to understand the businesses that provide the products and services used for environmental purposes and the constraints under which they operate. This will enable the Federal government to anticipate the effects of present and future policies on innovation.

Provide direct EPA funding to develop and commercialize selected technologies that are poised to meet critical environmental needs, offer high prospects for breakthrough, and require public financial support for timely success. Technologies will be evaluated for support under two broad categories:

1. cleaner industrial technologies and practices that prevent pollution, and
   
2. control, remediation, monitoring, and other technologies that comprise the traditional environmental technology sector.

Introduction:

EPA's direct financial contribution to the development of environmental technology has been -- and will continue to be -- a small percentage of the total amount invested by both the private sector and other Federal agencies. Yet EPA's unique vantage point allows it to identify emerging technologies which if successfully developed would fill a present or anticipated environmental or regulatory need. In cases where such a need is identified and private investment in a potential technological solution is inadequate, targeted EPA funding can boost the chances for success.

EPA funding will leverage rather than displace private sector funding, and be injected at critical developmental stages. Under this part of the strategy, EPA will both co-fund and wholly fund development undertaken by private and public sector collaborators, as well as in its own and other government laboratories. Special emphasis will be given to funding cleaner technologies that show promise for preventing pollution, but spending will also be directed to control, remediation, monitoring, and other technologies that fill critical environmental gaps, including the unmet needs of small businesses.

EPA funding will supplement non-EPA sources or, in a few cases, be the sole support for a project. By emphasizing joint projects, EPA will be able to spread its direct financial support across a larger number of new technologies. However, the primary intended benefit of a partnership approach is the maximizing of expertise brought to bear on achieving successful commercialization of selected technologies. Each potential party to a joint project -- EPA, other Federal agencies, private developers, university researchers, and potential users -- can bring important and unique knowledge and expertise to the effort. In a marketplace as complex as environmental technology, it is difficult for any one individual or institution to develop the comprehensive expertise necessary to take a new technology idea successfully all the way from the garage to the global marketplace. As a result, commercialization plans developed by either the Federal government or the private sector can be shortsighted and not realistic in their appraisal of the inherent constraints in this highly regulated marketplace. EPA will seek to overcome these limitations through its emphasis on stronger partnerships.

An innovative idea that is never incorporated into a new technology or that sits on a shelf and is never installed contributes nothing to the nation's environmental effort or to the entrepreneur who created it. EPA will seek to ensure that a high proportion of environmental technologies developed with its funding are successfully commercialized and used to solve environmental problems. EPA will use its direct funding authority to seek out joint projects with other stakeholders that hold significant potential for success and promise to fill critical environmental gaps.

Statement of the Problem:

Investors typically regard the environmental technology market as risky and uncertain, particularly at certain points in the development pipeline. They have difficulty assessing investment risks and limiting them to acceptable levels. The environmental technology market is unusual in that it is driven by environmental policies and programs. Nearly all new technologies must pass regulatory muster by permit writers at one or more levels of government (federal, state, and local). Investment risk is difficult to measure, in part, because of varying regulatory requirements and processes, uncertainties about whether permits will be issued, and concerns about the scarcity and credibility of data demonstrating that a particular new technology can meet compliance requirements. Thus, investors tend not to back environmental technologies until late in the development sequence, constraining developers' ability to fund the pilot and prototype scale-up stages.

A new environmental technology is not a good investment for financiers simply because it promises to produce significant environmental benefits. The environmental technology marketplace is structured in a way that some environmentally beneficial technology improvements are not profitable. In such cases, since the technology's social benefits cannot be adequately captured by a private investor, the level of investment in its success may be inadequate, and public investment by EPA may be justified. A private investment shortfall may also emerge when development of an innovative technology is proposed in advance of the promulgation of the specific regulatory requirements that create a market for it. Being "ahead of one's time" can be perilous in a market created primarily by government policies.

EPA's Proposed Stragegy:

1. EPA will provide funding to technology developers, usually on a collaborative basis, to conduct research and development on promising technologies that are critical to environmental progress.
   • EPA financial support may be given to projects at any stage of the R&D cycle, including planning, research, development, testing, and commercialization. These investments will be guided by evaluation criteria and by EPA's assessment of which gaps in the U.S. environmental technology base are most responsible for constraining progress toward national environmental goals. Special priority will be given to funding the development of innovative clean technologies that prevent pollution, rather than those that control or cleanup pollution after it is generated. High priority will also be given to projects benefitting small businesses.
     1. Direct Co-funding of a Promising Technology that Fulfills An Environmental and Regulatory Need: ADVACATE Technology A major obstacle to achieving the Clean Air Act's goals has been the high costs to coal-fired electric utilities of scrubbing stack gases by the wet lime process. In the mid-1980's EPA's Air and Energy Research Laboratory in North Carolina entered into a cooperative research partnership with the University of Texas to develop a more cost-effective method of cleaning flue gases. Out of this collaboration came a technique known as ADVACATE, using an advanced silicate that is more absorbent than lime. This process removes 90-95% of the sulfur dioxide and other acidic gases from stacks of any coal-fired burner. The Electric Power Research Institute estimates the new process to cost $85 per kilowatt ($130 per kilowatt less than conventional flue gas scrubbing). If 10-25% of present American utility boiler capacity were retrofitted with the ADVACATE process, an estimated capital costs savings of from $1 to $3 billion could result, saving operating costs over a five year period (1995-2000) of from $4 to $10 billion.

     2. A short-term pilot scale test of the ADVACATE technology has taken place at Ohio Edison's Edgewater Plant and ABB/Flakt has just completed tests on a large scale pilot at TVA's Shawnee Steam Plant through a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA). If the process proves as successful as projected, it should go a long way toward achieving acid rain reduction goals of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. ADVACATE has also been discussed with Thailand and Poland as a possible way to address SO2 problems,demonstrating the technology's export potential.

   • EPA will expand its capacity to collaborate with the private sector by continuing to improve the Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) process under the Federal Technology Transfer Act. EPA will expand its use of CRADAs both to support the commercialization of innovative technologies in which EPA holds a proprietary position and to help develop and commercialize technologies whose rights are owned by others.

   • EPA will evaluate alternative funding mechanisms -- including revolving funds, loan guarantees, and the decision criteria used by other agencies and financial support organizations -- in order to examine the circumstances under which each might be most effective.

   • EPA will also provide funding for evaluations of demonstration projects as part of the Clinton Administration's program to promote the export of U.S. environmental technology. In particular, as part of the U.S. Technology for International Environmental Solutions Program (U.S. TIES), EPA will provide financial and technical assistance to U.S. technology developers to help hem evaluate their technologies under conditions expected to be encountered in foreign locations. This assistance can be applied to testing of technologies and in-country demonstrations, thereby increasing the availability of U.S.technologies.

2. EPA will target and strengthen technology research, development and demonstration activities in its own laboratories. EPA will apply its own development capacity in its laboratories to emerging technologies that will fill important gaps in the U.S. environmental technology base. Targeting decisions for these investments will be guided by similar decision criteria to those used in EPA's direct funding of projects conducted elsewhere, including,including the technology gaps assessment. Projects in EPA laboratories will be both co-funded and wholly funded by EPA.

3. EPA will enhance its capacity to strategically target promising technologies for R&D funding.
   • EPA will seek to increase the effectiveness of its technology investments by developing and applying evaluation tools to R&D funding decisions. These could include such schools as life-cycle analysis and design-for-the-environment methods that integrate environmental and productivity decisions. These tools will allow the refinement and application of key criteria for selecting promising technologies such as:
     
     1. their potential to yield advances in filling critical environmental technology gaps, especially those not being nurtured by other technology developers ("orphan technologies");
        
     2. their potential for eliciting financial co-sponsorship from either other federal agencies or the private sector; and
        
     3. their likelihood of commercial success in the market.
        
     EPA will also share these assessment tools with technology developers in other Federal agencies and in the private sector.

   • EPA will involve private sector firms and other knowledgeable organizations in the planning of its own R&D agenda. Where possible, EPA will transfer responsibility for the latter stages of development and commercialization of a particular technology to a private entrepreneur as soon as sufficient interest is demonstrated to make it independently viable. This should encourage commercialization, a phase of the technology development process that EPA laboratories are not as equipped to pursue as effectively as its earlier phases.

   • In order both to become a more effective partner in technology R&D and to better target its own technology R&D, EPA will seek to increase its staff's knowledge about the commercialization process and the factors that affect the success of technology commercialization efforts. EPA will be able to apply this knowledge to its own commercialization plans, to evaluate its own progress, and to share this knowledge with others.

Enhance the capacity and efficiency of public and private networks that transfer information on domestic and international market needs and the availability, performance and cost of innovative technologies. Provide technical assistance, training, education, and information management to support a more efficient marketplace in environmental technologies. Catalyze demand by promoting federal purchases of innovative technologies at home and strengthening environmental policy and regulatory frameworks abroad.

Introduction:

Once an innovative technology crosses the hurdle of its first commercial application, it must gain widespread use if its full potential for protecting the environment is to be realized and its developer duly rewarded. By strengthening partnerships and networks that compile and disseminate information on innovative technologies,EPA will broaden the choices available to potential customers and help create a more informed domestic and international market in which American technology developers can compete on the basis of the quality of their products. In particular, EPA will emphasize multi-media technologies in its diffusion efforts in an effort to break down entrenched information barriers and pathways that today tend to favor control technologies over cleaner technologies that prevent pollution.

Strengthened partnerships and mechanisms for exchanging information, while critical, will only boost the diffusion of innovative technologies if market demand for them is also high. EPA will help catalyze domestic demand by encouraging the use of government purchasing programs and voluntary programs that favor innovative technologies. Abroad, EPA will address trans-boundary and global environmental problems affecting the United States by providing international technical assistance, training, and other capacity-building programs that strengthen environmental infrastructures and thereby expand the global demand for more effective environmental technologies.

Well-constructed and targeted EPA technology diffusion programs can accelerate environmental progress and regulatory compliance. By emphasizing partnerships, EPA can combine its own strengths with those of existing organizations in the public, private, and non-profit sectors that are active in diffusion. Important partners include: federal, state, and local agencies, developers, vendors, and users of technologies and environmental services, universities, professional associations, and industry trade associations. Many of these organizations are driven by research, development or diffusion missions, economic motivations, or other factors to maintain positive relationships with regulated parties.

EPA will emphasize coordination with other federal agencies in implementing its international diffusion efforts. In November of 1993, EPA released the first-ever coordinated interagency export strategy for the environmental technology sector. EPA jointly produced the export strategy along with the Departments of Commerce and Energy in response to a charge from President Clinton in his Earth Day speech in April, 1993. Entitled "Environmental Technologies Exports: Strategic Framework for U.S. Leadership," the strategy calls for enlisting a range of traditional trade promotion activities on behalf of the environmental technology industry. But it also recognized that these activities will not succeed in the absence of a more disciplined effort to support the domestic industry in navigating the fragmented U.S. market and building more innovative products.

Statement of the Problem:

Inefficient transfer of information between technology developers, technology vendors, users, government agencies, and others hinders informed customer choice and restricts the efficiency of the environmental technology market. New technologies fare poorly in this imperfect marketplace and often do not gain widespread use, in part because their performance is less well established and communicated than commonly used technologies. These market inefficiencies limit the tool-box available for addressing environmental problems, and translate into less protection than would otherwise be obtained.

EPA is broadly perceived as impartial and objective with respect to environmental technologies, a factor that positions it to be a credible agent for transferring information. On the other hand, the regulated community traditionally avoids non-essential contact with regulators, fearing that EPA's knowledge of the performance levels of new and innovative technologies may trigger a ratcheting up of regulatory requirements. Together, these factors suggest that there is an important role for EPA in technology diffusion, but that, in many cases, it can have a more positive impact by working to strengthen other organizations with which businesses are accustomed to working cooperatively.

Imperfections in the environmental technology marketplace are even more pronounced abroad. This limits the worldwide availability of U.S. environmental technologies and hampers global environmental improvement. The lack of strong policy and regulatory frameworks for environmental protection in many countries, and the widely differing requirements for environmental improvement in others, are also significant limiting factors. These and other limitations restrict the opportunities for U.S. firms to export technologies and services to both the large markets in developed countries and the fast-growing markets in developing countries. Informational deficiencies in the international marketplace also restrict the opportunities for U.S. customers and the domestic environment to benefit from the use of new technologies developed elsewhere in the world. America's principal trade competitors, Germany and Japan, have already positioned themselves to support environmental technology innovation and capture a leading share of the global market. The United States now has a limited window of opportunity either to strengthen its own presence in this market, or be left behind.

U.S. Environmental Training Institute: Building Environmental Capacity Abroad. The U.S. Environmental Training Institute (USETI) is a public-private partnership launched by EPA and the U.S. business community in 1991 to build environmental institutions and capacity in industrializing countries. USETI serves as a training forum to link U.S. businesses with foreign professionals in need of appropriate and effective environmental solutions. By providing these professionals with comprehensive, short-term training courses, U.S. ETI seeks to forge long-term, productive relationships between the private sector, governments, international agencies, and non-governmental organizations in the U.S. and industrializing countries.

Through human resource development and continuous opportunities for information and technology exchange, professionals can work together to generate positive global environmental change. USETI currently has twenty-five courses scheduled for 1994, including nine overseas. Organized according to specific needs of participants, courses range from a general overview of environmental risk management, pollution prevention, and other environmental management techniques to more specific courses on water quality testing, bioremediation, and air and water pollution control techniques. The development of environmental capacity abroad will help stimulate demand for U.S. environmental technology and expertise.

EPA's Proposed Strategy:

1. EPA will evaluate the effectiveness of existing diffusion programs and develop a strategy to strengthen them.
   • To provide a stronger underpinning for expanding its diffusion efforts, EPA will assess the effectiveness of existing programs conducted by the Agency and other public and private entities. This will involve increased efforts both to define measures of success for those programs and to consult with their users, the wide range of organizations that manage environmental protection, as well as develop and adopt innovative technologies. The Agency will assess the information needs of various customers, the adequacy of existing diffusion tools and programs, and the opportunities to design improvements to them. Among the specific tools to be assessed are:
     
     1. clearinghouses,
        
     2. report dissemination,
        
     3. conferences and symposia,
        
     4. training, and
        
     5. professional publications.

   • Building on its assessment of existing diffusion programs, EPA will develop a coordinated strategy to strengthen and supplement them. This strategy will reflect both the needs of different categories of regulated parties, and the Agency's objective to emphasize multi-media approaches. The strategy will address a number of issues, such as how EPA can most effectively disseminate credible technology information, and how it can best partner with other organizations involved in this area.

2. EPA will expand its efforts to increase the flow of constructive and credible information into the environmental technology marketplace.
   • Increase efforts to collect and report credible and usable technology information produced by EPA, other government agencies, and other sources. EPA will make a special effort to collect information on cleaner technologies that offer multi-media benefits.

   • Building on its strengthened collection and reporting systems, EPA will expand its programs to disseminate information directly to technology users. This will enable EPA to provide a wider variety of information about more technologies to more potential customers and to more organizations that independently diffuse information.

   • Develop partnerships with, and strengthen the information transfer capability of, organizations that may have both a clear understanding of the information and technology needs of the market and a strong relationship with technology users.

3. EPA will catalyze domestic demand for innovative technologies by strengthening voluntary, non-regulatory programs and encouraging other federal agencies to favor innovative technologies in their purchasing decisions.
   • Expand programs that help strengthen markets for innovative technology through non-regulatory means. During the last several years, EPA has had remarkable success in working with the private sector on a voluntary basis to create markets that result in substantial environmental improvements. Among these are:
     
     1. the "Green Lights" program that encourages the use of energy-efficient lighting in commercial buildings,
        
     2. the "Energy Star" program that encourages the diffusion of energy-efficient components in computers, and
        
     3. the "Golden Carrot" program that stimulated the development and commercialization of energy efficient refrigerators by assuring a market.

   • Encourage other federal agencies to expand their purchases of innovative technologies or products manufactured with clean technologies. In addition, EPA will explore with other federal agencies the development of amendments to procurement procedures that make it easier for federal government staff to purchase new technologies.

4. EPA will expand its international technology diffusion activities, as part of the Administration's new interagency export strategy for environmental technologies.
   • EPA will promote the application of U.S. environmental technologies in solving international environmental problems. Under the President's Environmental Technology Initiative, the Agency is greatly expanding its international activities related to technology innovation and use through the U.S. Technology for International Environmental Solutions (U.S. TIES) program. Under its U.S. TIES program, EPA will enlist the expertise, creativity, and resources of the private sector in environmental progress overseas. The concept of a public-private partnership on behalf of the global environment has been emphasized in a number of Presidential and Congressional mandates, including the President's State of the Union Address in January 1993, the 1994 legislation appropriating resources for EPA, and the Clinton Administration's environmental technology export strategy, released in November 1993 and entitled, "Environmental Technologies Exports: Strategic Framework for U.S. Leadership." In implementing its export-related activities, EPA will take special precautions to safeguard its international credibility and reputation for objectivity.

   • EPA's objectives include the reduction of trans-boundary and global environmental problems affecting the United States and stronger environmental policy frameworks throughout Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, Mexico, and other parts of the developing world. In addition, by expanding commercial opportunities for U.S. suppliers, EPA will also advance broader U.S. objectives on global competitiveness and trade. EPA's U.S. TIES overseas on-site technology demonstration and evaluation activities are is described above in Objective #3. These activities will help foster the use of U.S. technologies in other countries by, among other things, producing performance data under actual operating conditions. Under U.S. TIES and other international technology programs, EPA will undertake the following activities.
     1. Provide international technical assistance, training, and other capacity-building programs to strengthen or build environmental infrastructures throughout the world and expand the global market for new environmental technologies and expertise. Specifically, EPA will assist developing country governments in establishing policy and program frameworks for environmental protection; in developing environmental assessment, monitoring and enforcement capabilities; and in applying pollution prevention, risk management and other environmental management techniques.

     2. Collect and disseminate credible and non-proprietary information on into performance and costs of relevant U.S. technologies for meeting these needs. Such information will assist U.S. suppliers in identifying environmental opportunities overseas and encourage greater international recognition of the role U.S. technologies and expertise can play in solving international environmental problems.

     3. Promote greater participation of the U.S. public and private sectors in the development of both regulatory and voluntary international standards that set requirements for technologies for environmental protection. This will help to "level the playing field" and provide consistent standards for the environmental technology industry.

     4. Provide financial support for pre-feasibility and feasibility studies for international environmental projects that involve renewable energy, energy efficient and other reduced emission technologies. This effort will serve as a pilot to demonstrate effective measures for overcoming financial and other barriers to the adoption of additional categories of technologies in the future.