Supply Chain Sustainability—Drivers, Inhibitors, Solutions - Technology Management for Sustainable Production and Logistics - page 61

Citizens of many countries and regions face with a number of environmental
challenges such as global warming, hurricanes, droughts, declining natural resources
and pollution of natural environment. The question is what role the environmental
regulation should play in this field. Sustainability has become a sphere of great
interest, especially in case of energy intensive industries—heavy, metal, power
industries, and also transport and logistics. It is a reason of increasing pressure for
the adoption of environmentally friendly processes and green products promotion. If
firms don't want to engage in eco-innovation then there is a need for environmental
policies and regulation. There are arguments that correctly designed government
regulations and institutional arrangements may stimulate sustainable development
(Halila and Rundquist 2011 ). This opinion is now commonly accepted in the
policymaking circles of many developed countries. Hence, governments formulate
environmental regulations, directly or indirectly establish limits on emissions
and to control the material and energy outputs of society to the environment
(Ramanathan et al. 2010 ). Even in China policy makers have started to notice the
importance of problems connected with sustainability. The result was an increased
environmental pressure on Chinese manufacturers (Zhu et al. 2007 ). The question
is how stringent regulation must be to be effective and how liberal regulation
must be to avoid resistance and opposition?
3.1 Different Attitudes of Policymakers
Consequently there are seen big differences in the world. As an example, there is a
large gap in regard to stringency of fuel-efficiency standards in Europe and Japan
on the one hand and the USA on the other. The stringent regulation is defined as
the regulation requiring meaningful environmental improvements, being costly or
inducing significant technological change (Ashford 2005 ). The EU and Japanese
policy instruments seem to be more stringent and more efficient than the USA
approach (CAFE) (Leitner et al. 2010 ). Transport process is one of the major
sources of environmental problems. Taking it into consideration, the European
Commission states that its aim is to “disconnect mobility from its adverse effects”
(Rossi et al. 2013 ). The so-called voluntary agreements are an important element
of the EU's strategy to reduce CO 2 emissions from passenger vehicles, energy
producers, building sector (energy saving construction, targeted in the perspective
of 2020) and to generally improve fuel efficiency.
The next option is so-called “smart regulation” for industry which should
stay competitive. It idea aims to make more effective and efficient use of public
resources by using a greater variety of regulatory instruments, from taxes and
emissions trading to corporate environmental disclosure and public participation
rights (Leitner et al. 2010 ). Such an approach attempts to create incentives and
procedures that induce entities to act in certain ways.
Standardization and benchmarking are also possible competitive regulatory
tools. In contrast to traditional sustainable regulations, the involvement of mixed
instruments partly adopted from their sensibility to market observations joined