Green-growth theory asserts that green-innovations will allow us to decouple economic growth from pollution. Policies that promote green-innovations are therefore paramount. Scholarship has become increasingly interested in how green-clusters can contribute to sustainable innovation and decoupled green-growth. In this study, we create an agent-based model that can simulate a cluster's transition, as shaped by different policy instruments. We use this model to explore the effects of a) innovation grants, b) fines for pollution c) financial incentives for entrants, and d) an instrument mix of incentives and fines, on the green-growth of a peripheral-region cluster. Our results indicate that designing instruments for absolutely decoupled growth of peripheral-clusters is close to impossible; and demonstrate the inherent trade-offs in designing policies for relatively decoupled growth. Based on these results, we opine there should be more nuanced deliberation on the potential contribution of green-clusters to sustainable development,with greater focus on the possible trade-offs.

绿色增长理论断言，绿色创新将使我们能够将经济增长与污染脱钩。因此，促进绿色创新的政策至关重要。学术界对绿色集群如何促进可持续创新和脱钩的绿色增长越来越感兴趣。在这项研究中，我们创建了一个基于代理的模型，该模型可以模拟集群的过渡，由不同的政策工具塑造。我们使用这个模型来探索 a) 创新补助金、b) 污染罚款 c) 对进入者的财务激励以及 d) 激励和罚款的工具组合对外围区域集群的绿色增长的影响。我们的结果表明，为外围集群的绝对解耦增长设计工具几乎是不可能的。并展示在为相对脱钩的增长设计政策时的内在权衡。基于这些结果，我们认为应该更加细致地考虑绿色集群对可持续发展的潜在贡献，并更加关注可能的权衡取舍。