Thinking globally should encourage a focus on energy savings where the growth of consumption is highest and where the efficiency of energy production is lowest. This consideration suggests a special effort to bring clean technologies to developing countries in preference to often more expensive further marginal improvements in developed countries. Methods should be sought to stimulate investment by LDCs in both cleaner technologies and more efficient energy generation and use. This would have an additional dividend in building endogenous capacity to manage energy in developing countries. In areas where carbon taxes have been established, for example, the proceeds of such taxes should be used primarily to invest in the best carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction projects on a world scale. A real incentive for private industry of the developed world would be a system of "carbon dioxide reduction credit" that would encourage private investments in locations where a given amount of CO2 reduction could be achieved at the lowest cost.
Cleaner technologies have played a critical role in many of the successes in pollution control in industrialized countries recorded since the 1970s. Flue scrubbers at power stations, waste recovery and recycling systems, and catalytic converters fitted to vehicles are now mainstream technologies in the developed countries. As regulation and compliance regimes have gradually been tightened, a major global environmental market has emerged for the environmental technologies and services required to meet these new standards.