Industry perceptions of government interventions: generating an energy efficiency norm

ABSTRACT

The world has been grappling with energy efficiency for decades. Much attention has been focused on how government can encourage energy efficiency, but there has been essentially none on industry perspectives of which government interventions are necessary to encourage these actions to become the norm. We address this gap through a study of industry views as to which government interventions prompt corporate actors to adopt energy efficiency measures across three industries (building and construction, energy/utilities, and hospitality) in Canada and the United Kingdom. Our findings demonstrate that industry responses mirror recent literature on the need for a mixture of policy tools. Where our findings depart from this literature is that we find a strong endorsement of the use of information provided by government and antipathy towards the use of economic instruments to engender new norms of behaviour. This finding is particularly significant given that much of the literature focuses on the benefits of economic instruments in advancing sustainability goals. We also find the express norms found in command and control instruments are, in the views of industry actors, necessary to make a shift from energy efficiency actions being carried out only by leaders within the industry to these actions becoming standard.

KEYWORDS:

• Energy efficiency
• regulatory toolbox
• environmental law
• environmental regulation
• command and control
• economic instruments
• environmental information

Acknowledgements

This project was funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Grant (430-2016-00392). The authors would like to thank Christina Gagliano-Veiga, Lindsay Lucato, Jonah Kahansky and Jae Page for their valuable contributions as research assistants on this project. All errors or omissions rest with the authors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Laurel Besco is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography, Geomatics, and Environment and the Institute for Management and Innovation, University of Toronto Mississauga. Her research focuses on environmental law and policy, green economy, and corporate sustainability.

Elizabeth A. Kirk is Professor of Global Governance and Ecological Justice at the University of Lincoln and Director of the Lincoln Centre for Ecological Justice. Her expertise is in (international) environmental law, the role of law in producing normativity and in governance. Elizabeth’s work has demonstrated the role of science, legal and general culture as well as individual actors and groups of actors in creating laws that encourage and enable States, companies and individuals to comply with them.

Notes

1 See for example, http://apps.environment-agency.gov.uk/wiyby/37827.aspx; https://www.canada.ca/en/services/environment/pollution-waste-management/national-pollutant-release-inventory.html; http://ecolabelindex.com. Similarly, a search of a major legal journal database (Heinonline) returned 3263 entries relating to the use of labelling for environmental purposes.

2 Ethical approval was provided by the University of Toronto Research Ethics Boards (Protocol Number 33665). Participants gave their consent verbally for phone interviews, with consent recorded by the researcher. Where interviews were conducted in person, consent was given by signature of participant on the consent form.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant [grant number 430-2016-00392].