Dissemin is shutting down on January 1st, 2025

Published in

Elsevier, Journal of Cleaner Production, (100), p. 278-285

DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.03.029

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Environmental leadership? Comparing regulatory outcomes and industrial performance in the United States and the European Union

Journal article published in 2015 by Andy Gouldson, Angela Carpenter ORCID, Stavros Afionis ORCID
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

Full text: Download

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Red circle
Postprint: archiving forbidden
Red circle
Published version: archiving forbidden
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

There is a widely held view that in the period since the early 1990s the European Union (EU) has overtaken the United States (US) as the leader with the most advanced or demanding environmental regulations. However, it is striking that there are very few robust comparative evaluations of the outcomes of environmental regulations or of levels of industrial environmental performance in the EU and US. This paper seeks to address this by comparing the standards and levels of performance achieved based on a case study of the regulation of a classic air pollutant (benzene) from a widespread industrial sector that has been heavily regulated in both settings for many years (oil refineries). Contrary to expectations, we find that on average normalised levels of emissions from EU refineries are three times higher than those from US refineries, and whilst outcomes in the US show marked convergence towards the best standards, there continue to be wide variations in the outcomes achieved in different EU Member States, despite the rhetoric of harmonisation.