General Project Information

How do firms and large multinational enterprises become carbon entrepreneurs? How do they react to the introduction of a market-based tool in environmental policy? What strategies for emissions trading do companies develop in different national settings across Europe? This research project will analyse the process through which economic actors develop a new economic rationality, allowing them to deal with greenhouse gas emissions appropriately.

The project has started in August 2006. The analysis will be based on two research components, using different research methods.

The first is a cross-national quantitative survey on company behaviour in the context of the EU emissions trading scheme, launched in January 2005. Firms will be asked about their level of activity as participants in the trading scheme, about their experiences with the introduction of emissions trading in their own company, and about reasons for rejecting or embracing this new instrument of environmental policy. We will approach all firms included in the ETS by their national governments in four countries: Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Denmark. This selection of countries reflects a wide range of different industrial sectors, of technological pathways for reducing CO2 emissions, and of country specific industrial and environmental policies.

The second research component is the selection of qualitative case studies which will examine in more detail how decision making processes on emissions trading have occurred inside the companies. A crucial question will be which factors were most influential in determining the company’s strategic choices for emissions trading, and which type of expert knowledge was used by the companies’ decision makers. We will look at non-traders and dominant market players alike to analyse in depth why and how firms emerge as participants in this new market.

The Team

Lisa Knoll                    Martin Huth