Environmental law is often accused of dragging down economic growth. In his 2024 report on European competitiveness, Mario Draghi even warned that too many sustainability rules could stifle innovation in Europe. He pointed to several sustainability laws as unnecessary burdens on business.
But this view is partial—if not outright misleading. Far from slowing progress, environmental law has often accelerated the adoption of new technologies, driving industries forward more quickly than market forces alone would have. From the ban on leaded petrol to restrictions on single-use plastics and the planned phase-out of petrol and diesel cars, environmental law has repeatedly pushed entire industries to reinvent themselves through ‘cleaner technologies.
The real question is not whether law shapes technology—it does—but whether it can steer technological development in ways that help bring the Earth back within its safe operating space.
The Techno-Solutionist Mindset
In the European Union, environmental policy is often framed around the idea that protecting nature and growing the economy can go hand in hand, provided technological innovation comes to the rescue.
This thinking has deep roots. Since the Industrial Revolution, governments have sought to reduce pollution and resource use by requiring technological upgrades. In the 19th century, courts already forced factories to install ‘cleaner’ equipment to limit nuisances for neighbours.
By the 20th century, the principle of using the ‘best available techniques’ (BAT) to set environmental performance standards had become widespread: companies were required to adopt the most advanced methods available to reduce emissions and improve efficiency in resource use and pollution control.
Many environmental statutes maintain this technology-driven approach to environmental protection today. For example, under the EU Industrial Emissions Directive, Member States must ensure that installations are operated so that ‘the best available techniques are applied.’ Article 14(3) establishes BAT as the benchmark for permissible industrial emissions. Because BAT conclusions are updated periodically, regulated entities are compelled to modernize their technological infrastructures over time.
Step by step, environmental law has thus acted as a quiet but powerful lever for technological modernization.
When Innovation Becomes a Shortcut for Sustainability
This approach can undermine sustainability when law and policy equate ‘innovation’ with ‘sustainability’ without assessing whether purportedly green technologies genuinely deliver environmental benefits.
Take the European Union’s InvestEU fund. It finances ‘sustainable’ projects, including digital infrastructure, new raw material supply chains, and innovative technologies. Yet sustainability checks only apply above high thresholds—often €10 million. Smaller projects are assumed to be green simply because they are innovative (Commission Notice – Technical guidance on sustainability proofing for the InvestEU Fund, 2021/C 280/01).
Or look at the push to expand European manufacturing of “net-zero” technologies and secure critical minerals for batteries, wind turbines, and digital devices. These are framed as inherently sustainable. Yet, the same technologies and their components are also used in defence and digital industries, whose ecological impacts are rarely considered.
A similar pattern is evident in agriculture. Agricultural policies frequently treat precision farming—reliant on sensors and data—as equivalent to organic farming, as though digitalisation were synonymous with sustainability, even when it serves to reinforce inherently unsustainable models such as intensive factory farming. For example, under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), Member States are encouraged to support both organic transitions and investments in precision farming and digitalized production methods, all under the banner of sustainability. Similarly, under the France 2030 investment plan, the French government launched the “Innov’Eau” call for projects in 2023, with a €100 million budget to support innovation in the water sector. The program aimed to accelerate the transition to sustainable water systems, prioritizing not only technologies to improve water quantity and quality but also the development of digital and data tools for water resource management.
As these examples illustrate, digitalization is often presumed sustainable by default.
The Limits of Techno-Fixes
Analysts are increasingly concerned about the environmental impact of digital infrastructures. More broadly, history offers numerous cautionary lessons against placing blind faith in technology.
Efficiency gains enabled by technology often trigger the rebound effect: as resource use per unit falls, overall production and consumption tend to rise, cancelling out potential ecological benefits.
Sometimes, solving one problem creates another. Replacing ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) with hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) solved the ozone crisis but worsened climate change, since hydrofluorocarbons are powerful greenhouse gases.
Even when technologies are labelled ‘green’, they may not deliver net ecological benefits. In 2023, the French Court of Auditors therefore criticised the practice of classifying spending on electric cars, biofuels, or digital tools as ‘environmental’ without checking their actual impacts or uses.
There is also a deeper issue: the relentless pursuit of efficiency through new technologies risks reinforcing the very extractive and consumerist logics that drive ecological destruction in the first place.
A Different Role for Environmental Law
If environmental law is to help society confront ecological collapse, it must go beyond pushing for ‘cleaner’ versions of the same industrial model. The real challenge is to guide technological development along pathways that genuinely protect ecosystems and reshape how we relate to nature.
That means asking hard questions: Which technologies should we promote? Under what conditions? For whose benefit? And at what ecological cost?
Law can help set these boundaries. It can demand transparency about the real environmental impacts of ’green’ technologies. It can support business models that prioritise sufficiency and resilience rather than endless growth of productive outputs. And it can push back against narratives that treat digitalisation or innovation as inherently good.
Beyond Techno-Solutionism: Steering Technology Toward Sustainable Societies
Next time someone claims that sustainability law is anti-innovation, remember unleaded petrol or single-use plastics, which we would not have moved away from - or at least as quickly - if it hadn’t been for environmental law. Environmental law has always shaped technology. The question is not whether it should, but how it can do so responsibly.
As students, professionals, or citizens, we all have a role in challenging the narratives around ‘green’ innovation. Do these technologies truly improve ecological footprints—or simply shift the burden elsewhere?
The future of environmental law lies not in clinging to techno-solutionism, but in steering technology toward pathways that make both ecological and social sense. That is the conversation worth having—at work, in class, and around the dinner table.
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This blog post is based on the paper to be presented at the SMART Network Symposium, Sustainability is (Still) Possible! Governing Market Actors for a Safe and Just Space, 18-19 September 2025, at the University of Turin.
