///REPEATING///TRADE-GERMANY: Environment Technology Products Export Hit

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Ramesh Jaura

BONN, Feb 7 2000 (IPS) - Germany’s new generation of Environment Technology (ET) products are becoming export hits, according to the federal environment ministry, which expects to encourage foreign buyers by launching a website.

“To go by the name “Cleaner Production Germany”, the website will make it easier for the world to purchase the offerings from the country’s ET sectors,” says the ministry.

“By supplying information on the environmental technologies now in the country’s pipeline, the website will also boost the transfer of technologies from Germany to the rest of the world.”

In 1998 Germany’s environment technology exports amounted to some 28 billion dollars, accounting for nearly five percent of the total exports of the country.

This is significant against the backdrop of three decades ago when Germany’s ET sector comprised of a relatively small number of companies. It now boasts 10,000 corporations whose products, services and intermeshed systems are sold literally throughout the world.

“These prevent pollution while improving performance and boosting profits,” says the environment ministry in a paper entitled “Strong Sales for Sustainability”.

The ministry is headed by Juergen Trittin, an eminent member of the Green Party which forms a coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), led by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

“The size of the environmental market in Germany is directly dependent upon how thoroughly the government sets and maintains environmental standards,” says Trittin.

Trittin is a staunch advocate of the need to extend strict environmental standards on countries, which have not yet enacted or enforced them.

He also wants to minimise the occurrence of “eco dumping”, in which countries sacrifice their environmental standards to get new business from multinationals.

Left unchecked, the practice of eco dumping could lead to a world-wide lowering of environmental standards, warns Trittin with an eye on both the developing and industrialised countries.

The sectors in which Germany’s ET products are deployed, include a wide range, stretching from automotive, power supply, consumer goods, urban planning and life sciences.

All these products started out as solutions to pressing environmental problems. They have subsequently been transformed into products boosting their users overall performance and profitability.

Take software. Half a decade ago, engineers working in Potsdam, Leipzig, Erlangen, Stuttgart and other centres of software innovation came up with a new type of programme.

It was – and is – capable of inducing propulsion and power systems, ranging from car engines to municipal energy grids, to achieve new levels of peak performance.

The programmes were originally created to minimise outputs of ozone, carbon monoxide and other pollutants present in Germany’s air. The only way to achieve that goal was by increasing the application systems energy efficiency.

“Both sets of accomplishments have made these programmes hits on world markets,” says the environment ministry’s paper.

Take the “metromiser”, a programme, developed by Siemens, which increases, by 25 percent, the energy efficiency of light trains, trams and other vehicles used in regional and mass transit systems.

It reduces the cost of operating these environment friendly transport systems by a corresponding amount. The saving, in turn, can be passed on to consumers, encouraging their use of the systems.

Another example of pollution-preventing, profit-weaving German ET items are small-sized cogeneration plants. They can be fuelled by a wide range regenerative or other low pollution fuels. Whatever particular fuel they use, the plants always feature very low rates of emissions.

This enables them not only to meet the strict air quality standards in force in Germany, but also makes them highly attractive to manufacturers world-wide, hospitals, drycare centres and to all those wanting to cut their energy bill and to increase their security of power supply.

Bio-engineering technologies developed in Germany promise to turn the pulp wastes of sugar beet into effective medicines. Indeed. The idea that biological waste could be an important raw material for the pharmaceuticals industry would have seemed ridiculous two decades ago – when these wastes, if used at all, landed on compost piles.

Meanwhile, thanks to the research done at the University of Hanover, Germany reuses a large amount of its biological wastes. The change is partially attributable to the new generation of environment-protecting technologies emerging from the country’s bio-tech sector, now numbering 2,100 companies, research institutes and other players.

Even more important, maintains the ministry, are the environment laws which have been made by the German government – even before the red-green coalition replaced the centre-right government in October 1998.