WORKING PAPER - The green industrial revolution: consequences and policies Author:

In all the 14 cases considered, possibly with the exception of the switch from the ox to the horse, the method of supplying the energy source needed to be changed. [...] In other words, and reiterating the point made in the introduction, the fact that the transition will (eventually) happen is, to my mind, certain. [...] Rather, along the way, governments from Denmark to Mexico to Russia, but also including the US and England, fuelled the early stages of the industrial revolution through policies, including by building and financing the infrastructure required, or lending money to early manufacturers. [...] As such, climate policies must be mirrored by social policies, as is the case in the EU with the Just Transition Mechanism, which aims to alleviate the socio-economic impact of the transition in the most affected European regions. [...] The risk is to undermine the very process of innovation creation, which rests on the free exchange of ideas (Rees, 2022), and that will be central to any successful national climate mitigation and adaptation scenario.