EMAS and ISO 14001: the differences in effectively improving environmental performance

Despite the importance that environmental management systems have in the environmental policy agenda, the debate on their effectiveness to improve environmental performance (e.g. the reduction of polluting emissions) is still open among researchers and practitioners. Furthermore, no previous quantitative works have addressed the comparative study of the effectiveness of the two main reference standards that set requirements for an environmental management system: the international standard ISO 14001 and the European EMAS scheme. In order to fill this gap, this research paper investigates the impacts of EMAS and ISO 14001 on the reduction of carbonic anhydride emissions on 229 energy intensive plants in Italy. By applying a rigorous statistical method, the results suggest that the implementation of an environmental management system in energy intensive industries has a clear influence on environmental performance both in the short and in the long term, but a different effect of ISO 14001 and EMAS on environmental performance occurs.