Aysun Aygun (p), Tüzin Baycan

Climate change distinguishes from other environmental problems with its uncertainties, global scale, long-term accumulation. This complex issue has many aspects such as; growth, development, industry, innovation, technology, international economy, etc. Traditional energy resources and energy consumption generates about 2/3 of GHG (Greenhouse Gas) emissions. Technology and innovations are the main solution for renewable energy resources, energy efficiency and energy intensity. In order to manage the technology and innovations, incentives that are clear, long term and credible are important components of a policy framework.
In Turkey, Kyoto Protocol and the adaptation process to EU legislation has been a milestone for concerning climate change issues and developing policies and strategies. In recent years, incentives have increased for renewal energy and technology to decrease GHG emissions.
In this study, the low GHG and renewable energy incentives and policies legislated in Turkey are examined. The main purpose of this study is to discuss the efficiency of the incentives. In order to examine the effectiveness of the incentive policies, the investments on renewable energy, low-GHG technologies and R&D for the energy used as input data. The trend on the used energy resources are observed. The policy instruments, their contribution to the low-GHG technology innovation and improvements are discussed in comparison.

Rajhans Mishra (p), Deepak Sethia

Smart cities intend to meet the citizens’ basic needs and provide the integrated and sustainable citizen centric solutions. Developing countries are keen to build infrastructure, design new cities and upgrading the existing cities to boost the urbanization. Recently, India has aggressively started smart city projects by identifying the cities that can be considered for up gradation to smart cities. Primarily, smart cities will massively use information and communication technology (ICT) to provide amenities and services to the citizens. Smart cities will integrate the processes and services to provide the uniform interface of government and related services. Different countries may define the services and mechanism of delivery of identified services to the citizens. These services along with their deployment model will form the framework for smart cities. This paper explores deployment model for smart cities in India in terms of intended services and associated implementation mechanism. For this, we explore different sectors of city management system (i.e. power sector for electricity distribution, infrastructures like roads, traffic management system, health services, and utilities) with respect to their existing and expected state in the context of smart cities. These identified sectors will require extensive information and communication technology resources to achieve smart city objectives. Resource planning is a critical requirement for the sustainability of smart city projects. The paper aims to develop integrated resource analysis for the implementation of smart city projects in India.

Philipp Marek (p), Bruno Merlevede

The European Union allocates a large share of its budget to Structural Funds Program in order to reduce regional disparities and to foster the economic, social and territorial cohesion across its member countries.
Given its importance, many studies have aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the EU's regional policy. These studies, which were predominantly focused on the growth of regions in the EU, have shown that impact EU Structural Funds depends on the regional absorptive capacity, the objective of the funds and on the intensity of Structural Funds. So far, there is little evidence on the direct and indirect effects of EU Structural Funds on the performance of firms.
This paper provides to the literature through the combination of firm-level information with detailed information on the regional Distribution of EU Structural in Central Eastern European new member states. By applying a Heckman-GMM estimation, we are able to assess the impact of the EU's Regional Policy on the survival probability of firms and on firm performance indicators such as productivity and employment. A high
share of EU Structural Funds leads to an increase probability of firms to remain in operation. Funds allocated to the category of Productive Environment lead to a higher probability of small and low productive
firms to stay in the market. Thereby, EU Structural Funds promote a persistency of existing economic structures.

Evgeniy Kutsenko (p), Ekaterina Islankina, Alexsey Kindras

Purpose
The article aims at exploring the ability of regions outside the EU to design individually smart specialisation strategies (RIS3) based on the case of Russia.

Hypotheses
1. Most RIS3 principles are considered in current regional innovation strategies without following formal guidance.
2. With (supra-)national level missing (i.e. uniform rules for choosing priorities, common analytical database, organisational support, expertise and synchronisation) a strategy is hardly to become smart.

Methodology
Hypotheses were tested on 7 innovation strategies designed by Russian regions; we used adapted methodology of RIS3 Assessment Wheel®.

Findings
1. Russian regional innovation strategies generally followed all 6 RIS3 design steps, but failed to complete each of 18 critical factors within.
2. The documents highlighted framework conditions, had priorities identified and monitored, but lagged in most analytical, governance and visioning.
3. Russian strategies were mostly R&D-based, declarative rather than instrumental: off-balanced KPIs, no road maps, updating.
4. Most regions prioritised “fashionable” sectors (e.g. ICT, nanotech). However, ICT was evidence-based in only one strategy.
5. Even regions – strong innovators or regions that formally considered many of common RIS3 principles failed to find their smart specialisation, since they were outside the system ensuring uniform evidence-based comparability (analogue of RIS3 Platform).

Discussion
‘Smart’ is a characteristic for the system of regions and not a single region (impossible to be “smart by oneself”). Uniform rules and organisational support for RIS3 design are required at the superior level of governance (national or supra-national).