Eco-innovations are meant to achieve synergy effects at the interface between economics and ecology, promoting the goals of the Rio-Götheburg and Lisbon Agendas as detailed in the EU Sustainability Strategy (SDS) and in the EU Environmental Technologies Action Plan (ETAP). ECODRIVE is a framework that enables the development of suitable indicators to measure the ecological and economic progress resulting from innovation at a number of different levels. These are the micro-level (goods, services, companies, consumers), meso-level (sectors, industries, geographic regions) and the macro-levels of society. With the help of this project a comprehensive conceptual framework for eco-innovations can be created that will distinguish between three types of eco-innovation indicators: on the one hand indicators that measure actual economic and ecological performance, on the other indirect proxy indicators that describe the expected performance and finally drivers that as indirect indicators capture those factors that are favourable to eco-innovations. ECODRIVE is commissioned by the European Commission and is carried out in cooperation with the Centrum voor Milieuwetenschappen Leiden (CML) and the Policy Studies Institute (PSI) in London. The participation of these different institutes enables the project to be approached from different perspectives in order to bring together complementary knowledge on eco-innovation and on indicators.
Work packages:

- WP1: Development of the conceptual framework and a typology of eco-innovation indicators
- WP2: Practical development of eco-innovation indicators
- WP3: Formulation of future needs
- WP4: Management und diffusion of the project in the form of multi-stakeholder workshops and the writing of a final report.