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China faces a significant challenge in the years ahead to continue to provide essential materials and products for a rapidly growing economy while addressing pressing environmental concerns. China's industrial sector consumes about 70% of the nation's total energy each year and is heavily dependent on the country's abundant, yet polluting, coal resources. Industrial production locally pollutes the air with emissions of criteria pollutants, uses scarce water and oil resources, emits greenhouse gases contributing to climate change, and produces wastes. Fostering innovative approaches that are tailored to China's emerging market-based political economy to reduce the use of polluting energy resources and to diminish pollution from industrial production is one of the most important challenges facing the nation today. The use of Voluntary Agreements as a policy for increasing energy-efficiency in industry, which has been a popular approach in many industrialized countries since the early 1990s, is being tested for use in China through a pilot project with two steel mills in Shandong Province. The pilot project was developed through international collaboration with experts in China, the Netherlands, and the U.S. Designing the pilot project involved development of approaches for energy-efficiency potential assessments for the steel mills, targetsetting to establish the Voluntary Agreement energy-efficiency goals, preparing energy-efficiency plans for implementation of energy-saving technologies and measures, and monitoring and evaluating the project's energy savings.

The aim of this study is to gain insight on the factors leading to success or failure of environmental voluntary agreements. To do this we relied on a comparative case study covering twelve voluntary agreements from six different European countries. First, a general evaluation framework for assessing the performance of environmental voluntary agreements is presented. This framework takes into account three different evaluation dimensions: application, impact and resource development. Second, we focus on the factors explaining the level of performance. Four external preconditions for success were identified: the general policy style, the readiness to use severe alternative instruments in case of non-compliance with the agreement, the potential of the sector to negotiate and act as one collective actor and the potential for market success triggered of by the implementation of the agreement. Next to these external factors related to the institutional-economic context wherein a negotiated agreement is used, the specification of an agreement is considered to be an internal factor influencing the performance. The comparative case study shows that taken individually each of the factors is not as such a necessary condition for the success of an environmental voluntary agreement. Rather it is the combination of these success factors that is ultimately decisive for the performance of an agreement.

This paper describes and analyses the use of environmental voluntary agreements, or covenants, in Dutch environmental policy. Covenants have become a widely used policy instrument in the Netherlands. This trend reinforces the strong neo-corporatist traits of Dutch society with its tendency towards bargaining and cooperation with interest groups. Over the years an authoritarian and distant policy style with a negative attitude towards target groups has changed into a new approach designed to encourage self-regulation. Instead of simply imposing legislation, the Dutch government often concludes agreements with relevant sectors of industry regarding the implementation of environmental objectives. Through negotiations between sectors of industry, the Ministry of the Environment, and regional governments, agreements are sought concerning the contribution of specific industrial sectors to the goals of the National Environmental Policy Plan. These goals aim for 50–90 percent emission reductions for specified pollutants. Since 1989 many such agreements have been reached. In 2002/2003 we carried out a study on the effectiveness of the covenants, commissioned by the Dutch ministry of the Environment (VROM). The focus in the project was the identification of success and fail factors. Our central conclusion on the use and effects of the covenants is quite positive, although we have also identified several constraints. Most importantly, we found the implementation context highly relevant for covenant success. In this chapter we focus on this context in order to understand the workings of environmental voluntary agreements. We describe the background in which the covenants are used as well as the resultant effects. Furthermore we highlight some guidelines for future use.

In Australia, corporate signatories to the National Packaging Covenant (NPC) agree to engage in a collaborative approach with government to improve the management and environmental performance of packaging in an effective manner. The NPC, signed on 27 August 1999, is subject to review after five years and a set of criteria are needed to establish its effectiveness. Based on the notion of ‘effectiveness analysis’ this paper examines whether the NPC can be seen to be effective in relation to a set of criteria that address the following aspects: the confining of corporate action; institutional structuring of agreements; and checking of performance outcomes. Comment is made on the results of applying effectiveness analysis to the NPC and suggestions are made about potential changes to any future Covenant that is negotiated.

Voluntary approaches play an important role in reducing industrial energy use and CO-emissions. Benchmarking can provide a starting point for negotiating targets, and are an added value to a monitoring program. Indicators are perfect for identifying the performance gaps, and to track performance over time. However, indicators at the firm level are still characterized by a low degree of standardization. Lack of comparability makes benchmarking very difficult. Indicators measure changes in one aspect (e.g. energy use) as if they were completely independent of changes in other aspects (e.g. waste generation). We argue that integrated indicators, based on micro-economic productivity theory, may one day assume the role of certified tools in the field of flexible policy instruments.

This chapter discusses the impacts on environmental effectiveness and economic efficiency of applying environmental agreements in combination with other instruments in environmental policy. The findings are relatively negative: while the administrative costs of such combinations can be high, there is a distinct possibility that the environmental effectiveness will be lower than if the voluntary approach had not been part of the policy mix.

In this chapter, an analysis will be made of Dutch energy efficiency covenant policies and the conversion of these policies into the EU emissions trading scheme. A simple model is used to assess the effectiveness of these policies. The regulation of the eighties and voluntary agreements of the nineties concerning energy efficiency meet most of the conditions regarding policy effectiveness. The current Benchmarking Covenant suffers from lack of transparency and the absence of an emission reduction target. The EU emissions trading scheme that is currently developed, at least has a well defined cap, but whether it will enforce real emission reduction in the future remains to be seen. The conversion of the Benchmarking Covenant into a cap for emissions trading currently does not reduce CO emissions but increases emissions of the participants involved. The cap that is derived exposes the lack of stringency of this policy.