Sustainable innovation yields both bottom line and top line returns as developing products, services and systems that are environmentally friendly lowers costs through reducing the resources required. Designers should view compliance with government legislation as an opportunity for sustainable innovation.

• Complexity and timescale of sustainable innovation

• Top-down strategies

• Bottom-up strategies

• Government intervention in innovation

• Macro energy sustainability

• Micro energy sustainability

• Energy security

• Examples of top-down and bottom-up strategies and the advantages and disadvantages for consumers/users

• Government intervention includes regulation, education, taxes and subsidies

• How macro energy sustainability can be influenced through international treaties and energy policies, instruments for change and disincentives, and national systems changing policy when government leadership changes

• How micro energy sustainability can be influenced by the role of the government in raising awareness and changing attitudes, and promotion of individual and business action towards energy sustainability

• How energy security can be influenced by energy demand/supply trends and forecasting, demand response versus energy efficiency, and smart grids

As energy security becomes an ever more important issue for all countries, designers, engineers and inventors need to develop new ways of efficiently generating energy. As new energy production technologies become available, designers need to harness them to be used in new products to improve their energy efficiency.