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A resource-based perspective on information technology, policy, and environmental performance

Published: 27 May 2015 Publication History

Abstract

Title IV of the Clean Air Act (CAA) amendment of 1990 required electric utilities to install continuous emissions monitoring systems (CEMS) -- technology that provides continuous information on the emission of certain hazardous pollutants like sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrous oxide (NOX) that cause acid rain - in their power plants. The information gained from CEMS in power plants was used in an emissions trading program to curb the emission of these hazardous pollutants. This paper investigates whether the use of Information System (IS) technology such as the CEMS are helpful in changing a plant's emission levels. Results suggest that the interaction of cap-and-trade policy with CEMS is crucial to reduce emission of hazardous pollutants thereby improving environmental performance. At the same time, installation of CEMS also provided complementary benefits to power plants in curbing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions not regulated under Title IV of the 1990 amendment of the CAA.

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        cover image ACM Other conferences
        dg.o '15: Proceedings of the 16th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research
        May 2015
        369 pages
        ISBN:9781450336000
        DOI:10.1145/2757401
        Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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        Published: 27 May 2015

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        Author Tags

        1. emission reduction
        2. environmental performance
        3. information systems
        4. information technology
        5. policy
        6. resource based view
        7. sustainability

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