Cleaner industrial production in developing countries: market opportunities for developed countries

This paper explores the potential size of the export market for cleaner industrial technology from developed to developing countries. Technology for cleaner industrial production already exists and is part of the export market of electrical and non-electrical machinery, chemicals and services sectors from developed to developing countries. Even so, not much is known about the size of the market. The literature on this topic is scanty. This paper compares estimated values of the exports of end-of-pipe and cleaner process technologies (fewer residuals per unit of output) from developed to developed countries. The value of the exports of end-of-pipe technologies is extracted from an OECD report and is estimated to be US $6.7 billion in 1990. The value of exports of cleaner industrial technology is an indirect estimate based on the embedded share of cleaner proceses in the export of electrical and non-electrical machinery for a selected group of OECD countries. The export of these two sectors amounted to US $132.5 billion in 1990 (47.6% of the total manufacturing). If only 5% of the value of the export of these two sectors alone had been embedded cleaner technology, it would have been equal to the value of the export of end-of-pipe technology. The paper proceeds to compare, in a similar fashion, the relative size of the value of exports of end-of-pipe and cleaner industrial process technologies from the Netherlands and Denmark to developing countries. This paper concludes with a few recommendations on how to expand the export market for cleaner industrial technology.