Paper short abstract:

Governments often believe that the answer to reducing CO2 emissions from factories is to find better technologies. Technology is important, but is unlikely to create much change by itself. The secret to success is to also create an environment in and around the factory which enables change to happen.

Paper long abstract:

The process of working on a large study on reducing the climate impact of factories has shown that as well as technological barriers, there are significant social, organisational, psychological and market barriers to change. For example, even if a promising new technology becomes available, businesses may not adopt it because they don't understand it, because they can't afford it or because they are not able to internally communicate its value.

These barriers could be overcome through interdisciplinary collaboration. For example, if business departments co-ordinate with each other (marketing, training, environmental, procurement and technical teams), and if key stakeholders collaborate (industries, governments, academics etc).

One of the most revealing lessons is the importance of proactive and long term leadership by those who need to make the changes. In this case, true climate adaptation will only be possible if industry leaders are inspired to drive change.