"Green economy is the new productive paradigm developing in our country", agree Symbolaand Unioncamere, respectively a foundation fostering Italian excellence and the Italian union of chambers of commerce. Italy is engaging in long-term investments on innovation practices. This will be beneficial under several points of view: environmental impact will decrease and more jobs will be created, especially to youngsters. Moreover, increased investment in R&D will contribute in enhancing Italy's reputation in developing advanced technology.

328 thousand firms have engaged in investing on sustainability since 2008. More than 216 thousand new job positions will become available in 2014. These numbers speak for themselves. Both manufacturing and service industries are committed to reduce negative externalities on the environment and to invest in green technology, in order to reduce energy consumption.

'Green' jobs constitute a great share of overall "research and development" related positions: 61.2% of people employed in R&D will be working on researching innovative green production systems and new technologies with lower environmental impact. Moreover, Italy's youth unemployment, which in 2013 reached 40%, is expected to be positively impacted by the creation of new green jobs.

In 2014, 42% of youth hiring will come from firms having engaged in sustainability. If we compare the stability of 'green' jobs with respect to regular ones, the incidence of permanent contracts is 52%, whereas in companies disconnected to investments in sustainable practices, permanent contracts decrease to 40.5% of the total.

It is important to point out that the sectors investing in green technologies are especially those representing the core of Italy's economy: food, agricultural, wood-furniture, machinery production, means of transportations production lines, textile and apparel. Accordingly, it is expected that if Italy will be able to complete this "green revolution", its industrial sector will be not only become more and more dynamic, but its global competitive rate will be also positively impacted by this change.

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