The role of environmental management systems in the Canadian Voluntary Climate and Challenge Registry

摘要

This study evaluates the Canadian Voluntary Climate and Challenge Registry (VCR), an important policy in Canada's approach to climate change during the 1990s. First, we relate the set of practices prescribed under the VCR to the well-established Plan-Do-Check-Act framework of environmental management systems (EMSs). We then examine VCR adoption and find that firms with past experience with management systems and firms in provinces with different legal, economic and institutional factors were more likely to adopt VCR. We do not find, however, EMS adopters under the VCR had significantly different GHG releases than non-adopters in the immediate years after the VCR programme ended.