{"title":"Green versus green: The case against holistic environmental permitting processes","authors":"Patrik Söderholm, Maria Pettersson","doi":"10.1016/j.ecolecon.2024.108412","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Globally, there is a strong interest in investments in zero‑carbon technologies, e.g., in industry and the electricity generation sector, but projects supporting the climate transition are argued to be held back by environmental permitting challenges. For this reason, there are calls for novel regulatory reforms that broaden the scope of environmental permitting, and the underlying legal rules, by assigning a more prominent place for projects' climate benefits, i.e., the carbon dioxide emissions displaced elsewhere in the economy. This commentary argues against such a reform, which could create more problems than it solves. It risks increasing the complexity and the uncertainty of environmental permitting process, e.g., by making it more difficult to evaluate how various legal rules should be applied in the context of individual permit applications. Such a reform also clashes with the anti-anti-environment task of environmental law and permitting. The development of zero‑carbon projects and the protection of environmental harms involve difficult trade-offs, but the main role of environmental permitting is to identify measures that allow these goals to co-exist. The solution to this green versus green dilemma is not to reform the scope of permitting processes, but rather improve the ways in which existing legislation is implemented.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51021,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":6.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Ecological Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800924003094","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Globally, there is a strong interest in investments in zero‑carbon technologies, e.g., in industry and the electricity generation sector, but projects supporting the climate transition are argued to be held back by environmental permitting challenges. For this reason, there are calls for novel regulatory reforms that broaden the scope of environmental permitting, and the underlying legal rules, by assigning a more prominent place for projects' climate benefits, i.e., the carbon dioxide emissions displaced elsewhere in the economy. This commentary argues against such a reform, which could create more problems than it solves. It risks increasing the complexity and the uncertainty of environmental permitting process, e.g., by making it more difficult to evaluate how various legal rules should be applied in the context of individual permit applications. Such a reform also clashes with the anti-anti-environment task of environmental law and permitting. The development of zero‑carbon projects and the protection of environmental harms involve difficult trade-offs, but the main role of environmental permitting is to identify measures that allow these goals to co-exist. The solution to this green versus green dilemma is not to reform the scope of permitting processes, but rather improve the ways in which existing legislation is implemented.
期刊介绍:
Ecological Economics is concerned with extending and integrating the understanding of the interfaces and interplay between "nature''s household" (ecosystems) and "humanity''s household" (the economy). Ecological economics is an interdisciplinary field defined by a set of concrete problems or challenges related to governing economic activity in a way that promotes human well-being, sustainability, and justice. The journal thus emphasizes critical work that draws on and integrates elements of ecological science, economics, and the analysis of values, behaviors, cultural practices, institutional structures, and societal dynamics. The journal is transdisciplinary in spirit and methodologically open, drawing on the insights offered by a variety of intellectual traditions, and appealing to a diverse readership.
Specific research areas covered include: valuation of natural resources, sustainable agriculture and development, ecologically integrated technology, integrated ecologic-economic modelling at scales from local to regional to global, implications of thermodynamics for economics and ecology, renewable resource management and conservation, critical assessments of the basic assumptions underlying current economic and ecological paradigms and the implications of alternative assumptions, economic and ecological consequences of genetically engineered organisms, and gene pool inventory and management, alternative principles for valuing natural wealth, integrating natural resources and environmental services into national income and wealth accounts, methods of implementing efficient environmental policies, case studies of economic-ecologic conflict or harmony, etc. New issues in this area are rapidly emerging and will find a ready forum in Ecological Economics.