AbstractThe European Union (EU) White Paper onGrowth, Competitiveness and Employment assigns a central role to the development of environmental technology. The motives for such a position are both environmental and economic. To promote innovation and the development and diffusion of new environmental technologies, various EU policy statements have proposed the integration of aspects of technology and environmental policies. It is suggested here that although policy integration may be a necessary prerequisite for the enlargement of the environmental technology sector, as long as environmental and technology policies fail to address the intangible issues of internal corporate culture, both the scale and the composition of the response to policy are likely to be limited.