Sustainable efficiency of firms when new sustainability targets are introduced

Abstract

There is a high potential for simultaneously increasing sustainability of the earth system and economic development by removing inefficiencies currently present both at the production input and output side. In this paper a static view on sustainability is employed, by introducing capacity constraints as the boundaries above (or below) which the system cannot maintain its stable state. Currently these capacity constraints are often not respected. In this paper it is shown how the efficiency improvement pathway of an industry and the firms within it can be calculated to come to a sustainable, profit maximizing state, given the existence of these capacity constraints.