Abstract
Purpose
‘Green’ business models1 have received considerable political and financial support, which for the public is a validation of the sustainability of the business models. The sustainability performance seems, however, often questionable, and the purpose of this paper is to investigate the performance of a specific public support programme for green business models.
Methods
Based on an analytical framework of key elements of life cycle assessment (LCA), 14 business models supported financially by the Danish Fund for Green Business Development were investigated. This included text analysis and interviews with companies receiving funding.
Results and discussion
Results document that despite clear ambitions of improving environmental performance, life cycle assessment and other quantitative methods are rarely applied among supported companies to document the environmental benefits of their green business models. Furthermore, the companies rarely consider substitution and alternatives or apply a holistic perspective in terms of impacts.
Conclusions
There is an urgent need to strengthen credibility of public support programme on the performance of green business models. The LCA community has, as expert community, a special role in pointing at the implications and need of documenting environmental performance.
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Funding
This research has not been supported by external research funding. However, the research idea and content has been inspired by participation in the EU-supported project ‘Sustainable Synergies’ on which AAU was the operator. The project was funded by the National Operational Program for the European Regional Development Fund, 2014–2020.
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1The dominating term in both the public and scientific domain is “sustainable business model”. I.e. a Google-search gives appr. 174.000 vs 3.030.000 results (approx. 1/17) and a Scopus-search gives 42 vs 718 articles (approx. 1/17) (“green business model” vs “sustainable business model”). We maintain the use of the term ‘green’ here as that is the term used in the specific public support program investigated.
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Løkke, S., Schmidt, J.H., Lyhne, I. et al. How green are supported ‘green’ business models? Time for the life cycle approach to enter public support programmes. Int J Life Cycle Assess 25, 2086–2092 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-020-01806-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-020-01806-9