As we demonstrated in Chapter 5 and as a small, but rapidly growing, body of research suggests, developing countries appear to be able to achieve win–win technique effects—reductions in the energy, materials, water, and pollution intensities of industrial production—simply by opening their economies to trade, foreign investment, and foreign technology (Copeland and Taylor 2003; Dean 2002; Reppelin-Hill 1999; Hettige et al. 1997; Wheeler and Martin 1992; Birdsall and Wheeler 1992; Lucas et al. 1992). While extremely promising, none of this body of work allows for in-depth analysis of the strategies and processes used by individual firms that import newer, more efficient, and cleaner technologies to reduce environmental intensities. In effect, this literature tells us much about win–win outcomes, but it says little about how these outcomes are achieved. If the import, adoption, and use of technologies that reduce environmental intensities were a simple and relatively costless process, this would not be a major source of concern. But, as we demonstrated in Chapter 2, there is a large literature suggesting that, on the contrary, technological learning and upgrading is a complex, difficult, and lengthy process, often marked by failure, that requires firms to make heavy investments in learning and upgrading (Amsden 2003, 1989; Bell and Pavitt 1992; Dahlman et al. 1987; Hobday 1997; Kim 1997; Lall 1992; Nelson 1993; Kim and Nelson 2001; Wade 1990; and UNIDO 2002b) before they can reap the economic and environmental gains associated with shifts to more effcient technologies. The core research question to be addressed in this chapter then is the importance of firm-level learning for achieving the win–win technique effects—improvements in environmental intensities associated with the import and adoption of energy and pollution-efficient technologies. Because firm-level learning is industry specific, path dependent, and influenced by the openness of an economy to trade, investment, and foreign technology, we focus on the learning effects of intensities reduction in one firm, Siam City Cement Public Company Ltd. (SCCC), in one particularly ‘dirty’ and rapidly expanding developing country industry (cement) that is undergoing substantial technological modernization, global consolidation, and greening, in an economy, Thailand, that has historically been very open to trade, investment, and foreign technology (Pongpaichit 1980).
Environmental intensity of economic growth in the Baltic Sea region