The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) has published a study on the development of green and digital technology trajectories in the EU and their sources of knowledge.
This map sheds new light on the hotspots of the digital and ecological transition, as well as on the places or regions that are making less progress in this area.
The authors of the study - Michela Bello, Davide Castellani, Giacomo Damioli, Giovanni Marin and Sandro Montresor - used a dataset of patents from 2000 to 2017.
For the authors, green technologies appear to be more widespread than digital technologies on average, but green and digital technologies have similar geographical characteristics. They are particularly well developed in Germany and France.
However, signs of recent catching up have been identified in other Member States, particularly in digital technologies.
At regional and local level, digital and green inventions in Europe seem to be developed in a few central regions and in Sweden.
As far as the knowledge base for the development of green and digital technologies is concerned, according to the authors of the study, it is mainly located outside the EU, and is concentrated in the United States and Japan.
Within Europe, Germany is the most important source of knowledge for green and digital technologies.
Link to the study: https://aeur.eu/f/7vc (Original version in French by Émilie Vanderhulst)