Innovation Oriented Environmental Regulation

Innovation-oriented environmental regulation is extremely attractive for policy planners and decision makers, since it is expected that innovations can cut costs of environmental measures and overcome existing trade-offs between economic and ecological goals. The central question is, however, how such a regulatory regime of environmental policy approaches should look like. This book provides an excellent overview of the state of research by presenting and discussing theoretical approaches towards a framework of environmental regulation and innovation, international case studies as well as econometric and modelling studies from Europe and the USA.

This book contains six studies on various national environmental policies and environment -oriented technology policy systems in Austria, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom, sandwiched between this introductory and a concluding chapter. These studies were conducted as part of the ENVINNO research project, "Towards an Integration of Environmental and Ecology-Oriented Technology Policy: Stimulus and Response in Environment Related Innovation Networks", which formed part of the Targeted Social and Economic Research (TSER) Programme of Directorate-General XII of the European Commission, now 1 Directorate-General for Research. We like to thank Mrs. Genevieve Zdrojewski of GD Directorate-General Research for her kind support of our research project. The project was carried out between 1998 and 2001 by research teams from the six countries. The co-ordinating institute was the Department of Environmental Economics and Management at the Vienna University of 2 Economics and Business Administration. At this place we want to mention all researchers involved in the ENVINNO project and we want to thank them all for their contributions to this book and the project and for the good time we have had performing the project and meeting each other at regular intervals in Vienna (A), Enschede (NL), Berlin (D), and Sevilla (E). Department of Environmental Economics and Management at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration in Austria: • Univ. Prof. Dr. Uwe Schubert, • Mag. Judith Kock, • Mag. Jiirgen Mellitzer, 1 Under contract-number SOEI-CT98-110S. 2 The project website is http://www.wu-wien.ac.atiwwwu/institute/iuwIENVINNO.

Here is a dialog among worldwide experts across disciplines concerning theoretical frameworks and practical experiences to guide research and policy "towards environmental innovation systems". The contributors explore new directions of research at the border of two research traditions: systems of innovation and environmental innovations. The text examines the four main components of environmental innovation systems: conceptual foundations, empirical experiences, strategic approaches, and experiences with policy instruments.

Winner, 2007 Louis Brownlow Award presented by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) and 2006 Best Book in Environmental Management and Policy, American Society for Public Administration. Environmental regulation in the United States has succeeded, to a certain extent, in solving the problems it was designed to address; air, water, and land, are indisputably cleaner and in better condition than they would be without the environmental controls put in place since 1970. But Daniel Fiorino argues in The New Environmental Regulationthat—given recent environmental, economic, and social changes—it is time for a new, more effective model of environmental problem solving. Fiorino provides a comprehensive but concise overview of U.S. environmental regulation—its history, its rationale, and its application—and offers recommendations for a more collaborative, flexible, and performance-based alternative. Traditional environmental regulation was based on the increasingly outdated assumption that environmental protection and business are irreversibly at odds. The new environmental regulation Fiorino describes is based on performance rather than on a narrow definition of compliance and uses such policy instruments as market incentives and performance measurement. It takes into consideration differences in the willingness and capabilities of different firms to meet their environmental obligations, and it encourages innovation by allowing regulated industries, especially the better performers, more flexibility in how they achieve environmental goals. Fiorino points to specific programs—including the 33/50 Program, innovative permitting, and the use of covenants as environmental policy instruments in the Netherlands—that have successfully pioneered these new strategies. By bringing together such a wide range of research and real world examples, Fiorino has created an invaluable resource for practitioners and scholars and an engaging text for environmental policy courses.

A comparative analysis of environmental policy innovations in the United States and Europe that use voluntary, collaborative, and information-based approaches.

Private enterprises are facing the dual pressures of dwindling internal and external demand and tightening environmental regulations amid the global financial crisis. Strategies adopted by private enterprises to respond to environmental regulations can be divided into pro-active and defensive response strategies. The decision of an enterprise on whether to adopt green technology is dependent to a large extent on the strategic orientation of the enterprise for environmental protection. In the face of tightening environmental regulations, pro-active enterprises are more inclined than their defensive counterparts to adopt green techniques or develop green products. This paper represents an attempt to conduct an empirical analysis of the strategic orientation and green innovation behavior of private enterprises in responding to environmental regulations based on a field survey of the Zhejiang textile sector. It offers recommendations for the Chinese government to formulate and implement environmental regulation policy tailored to private enterprises.

This book deals with the increasingly complex issues of eco-innovation. Eco-innovation is becoming a conceptual reference point for many regional and international public policies and management strategies. Since 2000, this field of research has been focusing on environmental innovation, particularly related to the intensity of emissions, and economic performance and efficiency. There are two reasons for this growing interest. The first is that environmental performance is one of the main economic policy goals of European countries thanks to its relevance to the Lisbon Strategy and the Göteborg priorities for sustainable development. The second, which is partly linked to the first, is related to the growing impact of environmental regulation on private sector activity in many European countries. This volume brings together microeconomics studies on firms’ eco and economic performance both in the industrial and service sector; by considering a sector based perspective rooted mainly in the exploitation of NAMEA data; at regional level, and a macroeconomic analysis of the environment, income and welfare. This collection brings together the best of recent research in the area of eco-innovation and in its entirety is an excellent source of knowledge for postgraduates and researchers students of Environmental and Ecological Economics alike. As well as fully developing the theoretical aspects of its topics, these essays are also strongly policy-oriented and will be of interest to anyone seeking information an applied perspective.

Surrendering to the notion that governments lack the political independence to set and enforce environmental standards, Corral (Institute for Strategy, Technology, and Policy at the TNO, Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research) asks if it is possible to influence the technological and organizational innovative behavior of firms by means other than regulation. Addressing environmental and technology policy analysts, practitioners, and lobbyists, he presents a behavioral simulation model that he hopes can be used to harmonize long-term societal interests with short-term firm interests. The model attempts to link firms' ultimate behavior to their perceptions of environmental risk, economic risk, community pressure, market pressure, regulatory pressure, technological capabilities, and organizational capabilities. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR