IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v5y2013i5p1789-1805d25374.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Growing Green and Competitive—A Case Study of a Swedish Pulp Mill

Author

Listed:
  • Kristina Söderholm

    (History of Technology Unit, Luleå University of Technology, SE 971 87 Luleå, Sweden)

  • Ann-Kristin Bergquist

    (Department of Geography and Economic History, Umeå University, SE 901 87 Umeå, Sweden)

Abstract

The experiences of past efforts of industrial pollution control while maintaining competitiveness should be of great value to research and policy practice addressing sustainability issues today. In this article, we analyze the environmental adaptation of the Swedish pulp industry during the period 1970–1990 as illustrated by the sulfite pulp producer Domsjö mill. We investigate how this company managed to adapt to heavy transformation pressure from increasing international competition in combination with strict national environmental regulations during the 1960s to the early 1990s. In line with the so-called Porter hypothesis, the company was able to coordinate the problems that were environmental in nature with activities aiming at production efficiency goals and the development of new products. Swedish environmental agencies and legislation facilitated this “win-win” situation by a flexible but still challenging regulatory approach towards the company. From the early 1990s and onwards, the greening of the pulp industry was also a result of increased market pressure for green paper products.

Suggested Citation

  • Kristina Söderholm & Ann-Kristin Bergquist, 2013. "Growing Green and Competitive—A Case Study of a Swedish Pulp Mill," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 5(5), pages 1-17, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:5:y:2013:i:5:p:1789-1805:d:25374
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/5/5/1789/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/5/5/1789/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Karen Palmer & Wallace E. Oates & Paul R. Portney & Karen Palmer & Wallace E. Oates & Paul R. Portney, 2004. "Tightening Environmental Standards: The Benefit-Cost or the No-Cost Paradigm?," Chapters, in: Environmental Policy and Fiscal Federalism, chapter 3, pages 53-66, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Ambec, Stefan & Barla, Philippe, 2005. "Can Environmental Regulations be Good for Business? an Assessment of the Porter Hypothesis," Cahiers de recherche 0505, Université Laval - Département d'économique.
    3. Fischer, Carolyn & Parry, Ian W. H. & Pizer, William A., 2003. "Instrument choice for environmental protection when technological innovation is endogenous," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 523-545, May.
    4. Bergquist, Ann-Kristin & Söderholm, Kristina & Kinneryd, Hanna & Lindmark, Magnus & Söderholm, Patrik, 2013. "Command-and-control revisited: Environmental compliance and technological change in Swedish industry 1970–1990," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 6-19.
    5. Magnus Lindmark & Ann Kristin Bergquist, 2008. "Expansion for pollution reduction? Environmental adaptation of a Swedish and a Canadian metal smelter, 1960-2005," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(4), pages 530-546.
    6. Okereke, Chukwumerije & McDaniels, Devin, 2012. "To what extent are EU steel companies susceptible to competitive loss due to climate policy?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 203-215.
    7. Requate, Till, 2005. "Dynamic incentives by environmental policy instruments--a survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2-3), pages 175-195, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Söderholm, Kristina & Söderholm, Patrik & Helenius, Heidi & Pettersson, Maria & Viklund, Roine & Masloboev, Vladimir & Mingaleva, Tatiana & Petrov, Viktor, 2015. "Environmental regulation and competitiveness in the mining industry: Permitting processes with special focus on Finland, Sweden and Russia," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 130-142.
    2. Zhu, Qinghua & Geng, Yong & Sarkis, Joseph, 2016. "Shifting Chinese organizational responses to evolving greening pressures," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 65-74.
    3. Maria Pettersson & Patrik Söderholm, 2014. "Industrial Pollution Control and Efficient Licensing Processes: The Case of Swedish Regulatory Design," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 6(8), pages 1-22, August.
    4. Zhengge Tu & Tao Zhou & Ning Zhang, 2019. "Does China’s Pollution Levy Standards Reform Promote Green Growth?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(21), pages 1-18, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Martin Larsson, 2017. "EU Emissions Trading: Policy-Induced Innovation, or Business as Usual? Findings from Company Case Studies in the Republic of Croatia," Working Papers 1705, The Institute of Economics, Zagreb.
    2. Costantini, Valeria & Crespi, Francesco, 2008. "Environmental regulation and the export dynamics of energy technologies," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 447-460, June.
    3. Doran, Justin & Ryan, Geraldine, 2012. "Regulation and Firm Perception, Eco-Innovation and Firm Performance," MPRA Paper 44578, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Raphael Calel, 2020. "Adopt or Innovate: Understanding Technological Responses to Cap-and-Trade," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 170-201, August.
    5. Bergquist, Ann-Kristin & Söderholm, Kristina & Kinneryd, Hanna & Lindmark, Magnus & Söderholm, Patrik, 2013. "Command-and-control revisited: Environmental compliance and technological change in Swedish industry 1970–1990," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 6-19.
    6. Zhang, Hui & Cao, Libin & Zhang, Bing, 2017. "Emissions trading and technology adoption: An adaptive agent-based analysis of thermal power plants in China," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 23-32.
    7. Thierry Bréchet & Philippe Michel, 2007. "Environmental performance and equilibrium," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(4), pages 1078-1099, November.
    8. Perino, Grischa & Requate, Till, 2012. "Does more stringent environmental regulation induce or reduce technology adoption? When the rate of technology adoption is inverted U-shaped," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 64(3), pages 456-467.
    9. Dietrich Earnhart & Sarah Jacobson & Yusuke Kuwayama & Richard T. Woodward, 2023. "Discretionary Exemptions from Environmental Regulation: Flexibility for Good or for Ill," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 99(2), pages 203-221.
    10. Stavins, Robert & Jaffe, Adam & Newell, Richard, 2000. "Technological Change and the Environment," Working Paper Series rwp00-002, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    11. Arguedas, Carmen & van Soest, Daan P., 2009. "On reducing the windfall profits in environmental subsidy programs," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 192-205, September.
    12. Giulio Cainelli & Massimiliano Mazzanti & Sandro Montresor, 2012. "Environmental Innovations, Local Networks and Internationalization," Industry and Innovation, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(8), pages 697-734, November.
    13. Stefan Ambec & Paul Lanoie, 2007. "When and Why Does It Pay To Be Green?," CIRANO Working Papers 2007s-20, CIRANO.
    14. Aalbers, Rob & Shestalova, Victoria & Kocsis, Viktória, 2013. "Innovation policy for directing technical change in the power sector," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 1240-1250.
    15. Rik L. Rozendaal & Herman R. J. Vollebergh, 2021. "Policy-Induced Innovation in Clean Technologies: Evidence from the Car Market," CESifo Working Paper Series 9422, CESifo.
    16. Oberndorfer, Ulrich & Moslener, Ulf & Böhringer, Christoph & Ziegler, Andreas, 2008. "Clean and Productive? Evidence from the German Manufacturing Industry," ZEW Discussion Papers 08-091, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    17. Chu, Baoju & Dong, Yizhe & Liu, Yaorong & Ma, Diandian & Wang, Tianju, 2024. "Does China's emission trading scheme affect corporate financial performance: Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    18. Fuhai Hong & Susheng Wang, 2012. "Climate Policy, Learning, and Technology Adoption in Small Countries," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 51(3), pages 391-411, March.
    19. Adriana Gama, 2020. "Standards and social welfare in Cournot oligopolies," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 22(3), pages 467-483, July.
    20. Everett, Tim & Ishwaran, Mallika & Ansaloni, Gian Paolo & Rubin, Alex, 2010. "Economic growth and the environment," MPRA Paper 23585, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:5:y:2013:i:5:p:1789-1805:d:25374. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.