Introduction: evolutionary methodologies for analyzing environmental innovations and the implications for environmental policy

The goal of this special issue is to provide an overview of evolutionary approaches to environmental innovation with a focus on formal modeling. The contributions to the special issue are divided into three parts. The first part consists of a methodological discussion and a literature review, and serves as an introduction to the use of evolutionary economics in environmental studies and environmental policy. The second part consists of seven modeling contributions addressing a variety of topics, including technology diffusion, technological substitution, consumer heterogeneity, eco-labelling, renewable resources, and recycling. The third part contains two empirical contributions on innovation systems, applied to a specific sector (automotive) and particular emerging technologies (biofuels and biomass).