Industrial energy conservation in East and Central Europe
The study investigates the discursive developments in Poland from the interwar period until 2000 and compares it to industrial environmental practices in five production firms, which all existed in the communist period.
The purpose of the project is to throw light on how firms construct industrial energy savings in interaction with ongoing transformation processes of society and the previous history in the region. The processes of transition in East and Central Europe have had great influence on all part of society. Today, the after-effects are characterised by a gap between the people's expectation to society and the actually appearence of the society. For a part the expectation of the people build on the values of the former communist societies embedded in social norms and patterns, while society today build on other values. It is a hypothesis of the project that these different in understandings of society are reflected at production firms, which are the primary unit of analysis in the project. The investigation focuses on firms with ongoing energy savings and environmental activities. These positive examples are specified through case studies at a couple firms in respectively the Perm-region in Russia and the Lodz-region in Poland. The case studies are combined with a historical analyse of construction and development of institutions in the areas of industrialism, organisation of firms, understanding of nature, energy and consumption, and system of government
The main conclusions are the lack of a green market establishes a barrier for continuously industrial environmental practices in the firms; the distrust in society and lack of responsibility for our common future, both with roots in the communist past, are obstacles inthe environmental policy being accepted in the firms. The conclusions for the case studies are that the environmental problems are mainly understood as costs and therefore the solutions are mainly cost reductions. This appears as a barrier for the understanding: 'pollution prevention pays'. This understanding is in different shades found at all the firms. In general, the learning processes regarding the environmental projects are low, and non-of the firms view the environmental projects as a continuous process. It is rather a sequence of individual environmental projects related to separate environmental problems. Environmental audits are not on the agenda among the case firms, although the printing house has made environmental projects not entirely driven by external force
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Participants
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Contact
Fibigerstræde 11
DK-9220 Aalborg Øst, Denmark
Kræmer, Trine Pipi (Ph.D.stud.); Projektleder: Remmen, Arne (lektor), 96358318,
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