How to recognize and measure the economic impacts of environmental regulation: The Sulphur Emission Control Area case

Lahteenmäki‐Uutela, Anu; Repka, Sari; Haukioja, Teemu; Pohjola, Tuomas

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.03.224

Cited by 33 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…First, we incorporate different types of environmental regulations into a unified framework. In the measurement of environmental regulation intensity, previous studies usually choose several indicators in an attempt to build a comprehensive index to reflect and measure the overall level of environmental regulation [1][2][3][4]; in some cases, scholars only used some of the tools of environmental regulation in terms of the category of index selection, command-control [2,5,6], market-incentive [7][8][9], voluntary-participation [10,11] and so forth. However, this approach is not appropriate.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental regulation, green innovation, and international competitiveness of manufacturing enterprises in China: From the perspective of heterogeneous regulatory tools

Sun

Dai

2021

PLoS ONE

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Based on combined data from the China Patent Database, China Industrial Enterprise Database, and China Customs Import and Export Database for the period 2004–2010, this study investigates the impact of heterogeneous environmental regulations on the export technological sophistication of manufacturing enterprises. Given deepening international market segmentation of production and the increasing proportion of intermediate trade, and compared with the traditional method based on exports, the export technological sophistication calculated here, based on value-added, is closer to the true level. Since there has been no in-depth comparative study on the relationship between heterogeneous environmental regulation and export technological sophistication, this study fills the gap. The results show that all three regulation types bear a U-shaped impact on export technological sophistication. Command-control regulation exhibits a restraining effect on mixed trade, eastern, and foreign-funded enterprises. Market-incentive regulation promotes processing and mixed trade enterprises as well as domestic and foreign-funded enterprises. Voluntary-participation regulation promotes all enterprises with different trade patterns and ownership. The mechanism analysis shows that command-control and market-participation environmental regulations affect export technological sophistication through the green invention and green utility innovation channels, while, additionally, market-incentive environmental regulation affects export technological sophistication through the green design innovation channel. Considering the environmental governance issues, the policy implications for enhancing the entire industrial chain and enterprises’ export competitiveness are clear. Due to the unclear functions and powers of competent departments and a rigid threshold, command-control regulation is not conducive to cleaner production technology and the promotion of enterprises’ export competitiveness; it should thus be discouraged. Although both market-incentive and voluntary-participation regulations have promoted cleaner production technology and enterprises’ competitiveness significantly, the environmental tax system requires continuous improvement. The government should continue to raise public involvement in environmental protection to enrich the channels and forms of environmental management.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental regulation, green innovation, and international competitiveness of manufacturing enterprises in China: From the perspective of heterogeneous regulatory tools

Sun

Dai

2021

PLoS ONE

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“…There are a number of compliance methods available for emission reduction; such as use of low-sulfur fuel oils or LNG, HFO with scrubber and selective catalytic reactor (SCR), humid air motor (HAM), exhaust gas recirculation (EGR), and direct water injection (DWI) [10]. As discussed above, there are three main compliance options for sulfur abatement, i.e., MGO, scrubber system and LNG [30,31]. Using life cycle assessment, Brynolf et al [32] presented three compliance options for sulfur and NOx, i.e., HFO combined with SCR and scrubber, MGO combined with SCR and LNG.…”

Section: Emission Abatement Methods From Shipsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of the Increasingly Strict Sulfur Limit on Compliance Option Choices: The Case Study of Chinese SECA

Fan

2019

Sustainability

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The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has proposed several environmental regulations on controlling SOx and NOx emissions from ships in coastal areas. Under the framework of IMO, some areas have established strict emission control areas (ECAs) to reduce emissions, which mainly contain Europe and North America. To further strengthen the control and supervision over air pollutants from shipping activities, the Sulfur cap regulation of 0.5% by mass will come into effect on 1 January, 2020 globally, when all the sailing vessels on the high sea should use fuels with sulfur content less than 0.5%. This limit is stricter for the global recognized sulfur emission control areas (SECAs), where it was 0.1% since 1 January 2015. However, Chinese local SECA lags behind the globally recognized SECAs, where the 0.5% Sulfur cap was implemented from 2016 and it has to be strengthened along with the global sulfur cap 2020. These increasingly stringent emission regulations have huge effects on shipping operators. The current study discusses the potential impacts of the stricter sulfur cap on operators’ compliance option choices, where fuel-switching and scrubber system are analyzed under different sulfur limits. Meanwhile, the slow steaming practice is incorporated into the fuel-switching option by considering speed differentiation in different sulfur limit areas. This study develops a cost-minimizing model using NPV (net present value) method. It analyzes the optimal option within vessels’ lifespan considering the tradeoff between the initial investment and future operational cost for newbuilding vessels based on a case study. In addition, emissions of CO2 and SOx are compared under different compliance options in different sulfur cap scenarios. Our results find that the scrubber system is a suitable option to comply with the 0.5% global sulfur limit, and a higher efficiency of sulfur abatement can be attained by the scrubber system option. However, it emits more carbon emissions due to higher energy consumption used by the scrubber system. In addition, the effects of additional vessels deployed in the cycle on the compliance choices are also demonstrated in the analysis.

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“…The SECA regulation targets are the shipowners. The main compliance options are fuel change and the use of an exhaust gas scrubber (Kalli et al 2014;Lähteenmäki-Uutela et al 2017). Both come with a cost (Nikopolou 2017).…”

Section: Explaining Seca Compliance As Rational Calculationmentioning

confidence: 99%

What explains SECA compliance: rational calculation or moral judgment?

Lahteenmäki‐Uutela

Yliskylä‐Peuralahti

Repka

et al. 2019

WMU J Marit Affairs

Self Cite

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We explain the Sulphur Emission Control Area (SECA) compliance through analyzing both rational and moral factors for compliance motivation. According to preliminary analysis based on samples and measurements, the compliance rate for SECA is rather good and air quality has improved significantly. As costs of compliance are rather high and penalties for non-compliance rather low for regulation targets, moral motivation factors must be relevant for compliance. Maintaining good relationships with control authorities and peers requires shipowners to comply with the rules for practical and moral legitimacy. Our interviews with Danish, Finnish and Estonian shipowners confirmed that most of them follow the law simply because it is the law, this applying both to current Baltic Sea SECA rules and the future global sulphur emission rules. Obeying environmental law thus has a taken-for-granted status among shipping companies. Almost half of the companies specifically mentioned they follow the SECA rules because they want to take care of the environment, thus having internalized the regulatory content. Some companies see global compliance to depend on efficient controls.

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How to recognize and measure the economic impacts of environmental regulation: The Sulphur Emission Control Area case

Cited by 33 publications

References 60 publications

Environmental regulation, green innovation, and international competitiveness of manufacturing enterprises in China: From the perspective of heterogeneous regulatory tools

Environmental regulation, green innovation, and international competitiveness of manufacturing enterprises in China: From the perspective of heterogeneous regulatory tools

Impacts of the Increasingly Strict Sulfur Limit on Compliance Option Choices: The Case Study of Chinese SECA

What explains SECA compliance: rational calculation or moral judgment?

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