Environmental performance and practice across sectors: methodology and preliminary results

This paper introduces a new methodology for measuring and modeling manufacturers’ environmental performance and the managerial and technological practices that affect it. Facility level licensing data are used to develop indicators based on sector-specific criteria but capable of being analyzed across sectors, at various levels of aggregation. This addresses the problem that environmental performance and determinants tend to be highly context-specific, while modeling and policy interests are often more general. Using Integrated Pollution Control (IPC) information generated EU-wide, this approach should be capable of cross-country extension. The methodology is tested on a sample of Irish facilities in three sectors during 1996–2004. Preliminary results show its usefulness in exploring the determinants of environmental performance at the sector and cross sector levels. Word count = 10,049.