Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
pressed as limitations on pollutants and other
toxic substances emitted by various activities such
as vehicular tail pipe exhaust gases, effluents
discharged into surface waters, solid wastes aban-
don in landfills and other similar limitations. The
top tier is considered the most politically divisive
because it has historically imposed the greatest
compliance cost. More detailed discussion of these
top tier standards as they emanate from environ-
mental laws and regulations imposed by various
nations appears in other chapters and in the broad
literature of environmental law and regulation.
The middle tier of environmental standards
controls technologies and the technology mar-
kets; the latter is discussed more fully next.
Environmental technology standards address a
wide variety of machinery, apparatus, and devices
that obviate, eliminate, and sequester environ-
mental pollutants and other toxic substances. It
is expected that the most progress towards at-
tainment of environmental quality will occur in
the technology markets as innovation produces
pollution abatement equipment and conformity
assessment processes that will attract investment
into business models that support sustainability for
environmental quality. While government policy
makers can be expected to use de jure methods to
address technology innovation markets in some
situations, many of the standards for environmen-
tal technologies and markets can be expected to
be produced de facto or through VCS/consortia
means. This tier of standardization methods for
environmental sustainability may be the most
attractive for participation by the private sector
to enhance the development of environmental
technology markets.
The base tier of environmental standardiza-
tion concerns conformity assessment, testing
methods, metrology, certification, accreditation,
and monitoring. This tier is most appropriate for
leadership by scientists, engineers and process
specialists who can apply domain knowledge to
the development and deployment of monitoring
some government officials and deference to such
technical standards by can be expected by some
governments, particularly in the U.S. (OMB
A-119 1998) (NTTAA 1996). The public record
of these SDA will likely be retained for later
review as the years pass and questions about the
efficacy of standards, including conformity as-
sessment methods, will themselves be exposed
to performance quality evaluation, such as the
controversy that has plagued cellular standards
and EMF emissions. (Oshinsky 2010).
REGULATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL
STANDARDIZATION
The regulation of environmental SDA, initially
in the U.S., but now also in the EU and Asia,
necessarily involves three linked bodies of law.
The first area, called “essential due process”
by the American National Standards Institute
(ANSI) or called “voluntary consensus process”
when produced under rules of the U.S. Office of
Management and Budget (OMB), recognizes that
SDA is an inherently political process infused with
technical design, thus making effective public
participation a challenge (Rysman & Simcoe
2005). Second, standards increasingly embody
new design infused with intellectual property
(IP) that has produced a recent history of legal
problems: hold up, infringement, and licensing
complexity (Kobayashi & Wright 2009). Third,
SDA are inherently collaborative activities with a
long history of vulnerability to antitrust scrutiny
for joint ventures, patent pooling and claims of
collusion (e.g., price fixing, market allocation,
licensing discrimination or participant exclusion).
Links among these three major problem areas are
best understood when first approached with an
understanding of technology markets as well as
the markets that address environmental controls
(Albert & Burke 2004.
