Practitioners are increasingly interested in tracking progress on environmental innovation. However, many metrics used to quantify innovation do not cover all sectors and countries and are not necessarily available for detailed categories of technology domains. These traditional metrics may involve high data collection costs, especially when conducted on a large scale. They only partially consider innovations that reach the market and do not account for breakthrough innovations that represent a substantial leap forward in their respective field or industry. This issue is particularly relevant for environmental innovation, where rapid and largescale uptake is critical to addressing the climate, biodiversity and pollution crises.

To fill this gap, the OECD has developed new metrics across the innovation process. For instance, the OECD has developed indicators using patent data to measure innovation in environment-related technologies across countries on a variety of technologies. Additionally, it has developed plastics innovation metrics using patents and trademarks to quantify trends over time and across countries to establish preliminary empirical links between policies and innovation outcomes.