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6. Conclusion
The environmental quality objectives are exclusively regulated by the legal system. The setting of these objectives requires a careful analysis of different effects and components, inter alia not only environmental but also economic and social factors. Regulations don’t necessarily reject economic instruments as well as the market mechanisms cannot exist without underpinning of regulatory powers. The emission taxes need to be collected by the administrative machinery; the tradable permits need to be set down in the statutory standards. Setting and implement of standards call for public initiatives or participations and cost-effective approaches. Insofar as these synergetic effects, the CAC regulations and the economic instruments could not be neatly distinguished from each other. The most significant advantage of economic instruments is the legitimacy of cost-effectiveness as a result of the analysis above. If a wider range of values is considered, then the CAC begin to look unfairly maligned. An argument resulting from the research of differentiations among technical prescriptions (specification standards), emission standards (performance standards) and quality standards (target standards) suggests that if the options of using standards in a proper place, it gives no reason to complain about inefficiency of CAC. A best environmental legal framework should be a combination of the traditional CAC approaches, economic mechanisms, self-regulations or voluntary mechanisms, provided that a set of criteria could be considered, such as cost-effectiveness, availability in practice, economical efficiency of market instruments, suitability, the optimal allocation of environmental resources and etc.
The current legal framework on air and atmospheric pollution control in the UK is a very example of using the CAC regulations in conjunction, inter alia, with supplements of economic and voluntary instruments:
National bodies and local authorities have powers and responsibilities in relation to the National Air Quality Strategy established by Pt Ⅳ of the Environment Act 1995.
Integrated pollution control: the most complex industrial processes are regulated under the IPC regime in the EPA 1990 or PPC regime in the PPC Act 1999.
Local air pollution control: local authorities regulate less complex processes generating air pollution under the EPA 1990 as well as have powers regarding smoke pollution under Clean Air Act 1993.
Climate Change Levy introduced on April 1, 2000 are intended to promote energy efficiency and stimulate investment in new technologies but the levy combined with an offsetting scheme will not increase the tax burden on industry as a whole.
A voluntary Emission Trading Scheme launched on August 14, 2001 allows the companies with greenhouse gases emission targets to buy and sell emission allowances.
Kyoto Mechanisms was introduced by Kyoto Protocol, which set out three approaches including Joint Implementation, Clean Development Mechanism and International Emissions Trading to be potentially used to meet the agreed reduction targets.
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