Driving Green Change: Lessons from the 2024 Innovation Policy Prize

About the Innovation Policy Prize

2024 marked OHE’s second year running the Policy Prize –a prize fund of £40,000 with the goal of moving the needle towards wider thinking about global solutions for the most pressing health economic policy challenges of the day.

The Innovation Policy Prize is open to entries from a wide range of professions and levels of expertise. Most importantly, it is a global prize – whoever you are, wherever you are in the world, if you have an idea worth sharing, we want to hear about it.

In 2024, the Prize focused on the intersection of the climate crisis and healthcare. As we are witnessing every day in the news — from the wildfires devastating California to the toxic ‘winter smog’ in Delhi — the impact of the climate crisis is not one we can ignore. Environmental sustainability is no longer something we “add on” to other considerations – now more than ever, it’s becoming clear that sustainability needs to be embedded in every decision and policy we make.

The 2024 Prize participants were asked to consider how economic policies can incentivise environmentally sustainable innovation in the life sciences sector.

The Winning Solutions

From Delaware to California: A Road Map for Incentivising Environmentally Sustainable Innovation

Professor Andrew Briggs’ proposal advocates for a three-pronged policy approach to align economic incentives for the life-sciences industry to reduce their environmental impact from the earliest stages of product development.

The first pillar recommends moving from an ex-post to an ex-ante model of internalising environmental externalities, which would incorporate environmental costs faced by life sciences companies upfront rather than after-market assessment.

The second pillar recommends refining how the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) is calculated, to better capture the true economic and environmental costs of carbon emissions, and in particular proposes that predicted GDP losses caused by adverse climate impacts resulting from inaction are included in how SCC is calculated.

The third pillar proposes a dual reward system for the life sciences sector, where it receives R&D tax credits domestically, and where more developed nations contribute to a global fund to support health interventions in less developed nations.

The judging panel reflected that Professor Briggs’ proposal was a thoughtful and innovative roadmap for integrating environmental sustainability into the life sciences sector, and commended the fact that it paid particular attention to considerations of equality, and a global, intergenerational approach. At the same time, they recommended that there could be more clarity about the mechanics of the fund, and on how the fund would be financed. Finally, the judging panel recommended deeper consideration into how the three areas of known externalities should be interlinked in a global framework is needed.

Professor Briggs’ proposal can be viewed in full here.

Averting Pollution-Caused Harm in Lower-Income Countries: An Ecological Impact Fund

Professor Thomas Pogge’s proposal called for “greenovations” that continue to enhance human progress, whilst reducing the impact on the environment. The winning proposal focused on the Ecological Impact Fund (EIF) as one freestanding component of this, with the purpose of increasing uptake and incentivizing development of locally appropriate greenovations in lower-income countries.

The proposal hinges on the premise that the massive economic growth – compounded by large population increases – of many lower income countries in the remainder of the 21st century will have a far bigger impact on the climate than any choices that more developed nations might make today domestically.

It proposes that the EIF should be financed by high-income countries who have contributed most to the climate crisis and have historically benefited financially from highly polluting activities. In addition, further funds might come from international offset markets and from a capital endowment built over time from treaty-based contributions, donations, and bequests.

The EIF would promote the goal of rapid pollution reduction in the developing world by inviting innovators to register green technology with two legal effects in lower-income countries (the “EIF-Zone”. Innovators would be rewarded by the EIF for pollution-caused harm averted by their registered greenovation in the EIF-Zone, completed within a five-year period. At the same time, the innovator permanently forgoes, throughout the EIF-Zone, any monopoly rents it might earn from patents on its registered greenovation.

The judging panel commended Professor Pogges’ for a strong submission that demonstrated innovation in green technology deployment in lower income countries, that addresses both environmental and global justice concerns. However, they reflected that despite incentives for stakeholders, the implementation of this proposal would require substantial international cooperation and a level of funding by high-income countried that might not be aligned with their interests. The judges recommended further discussion on solution limitations, and potential perverse results of the policy implementation, with a particular focus on the life sciences sector.

Professor Pogges’ proposal can be viewed in full here.

What’s next?

More information on OHE’s next round of the Innovation Policy Prize is forthcoming later this year. Do sign up for our bulletin to stay up to date.

Explore OHE’s other projects on the intersection of health and the climate crisis

The sustainability of health care continues to be a major area of research for OHE. Given the importance and scale of the problem climate change poses, it will remain a core research agenda going forward, with sustainability being one of two main areas of focus for OHE’s new Change Initiative.