In this paper we assess incentives for clean technology adoption by firms that compete à la Cournot in local product markets subject to a tradable emission permits regulation. Sanin and Zanaj (2011) show that permit prices may increase after clean technology adoption. Herein we show that, since strategic firms are able to predict such increase, this results in a non-innovation equilibrium (even for very low adoption costs). To the light of the previous result, we find a sufficient condition for the cap on emissions to ensure positive innovation incentives.