The Structure, Strategy and Geography of Green Certification Services

The environmental and climate challenges facing our planet require more sustainable resource management solutions in the coming years. Environmental performance levels in the business community often reflect the need to meet laws and regulations (licence to operate) or green strategies that may involve innovation and branding of new business opportunities. In this respect, certification schemes can be used as a tool to integrate environmental engagement into daily activities, which according to Testa et al. (2014) is a procedure to plan, do, check and act. A certification project may include full-scale documentation, status reports, future goals, evaluations and plans for further action. This may be a way of identifying potential improvements that have positive environmental effects linked to energy use, material input or pollution. Companies may not least be motivated to improve their environmental performance if such investment generates positive economic returns (White and Noble 2013). Certification projects also include transparent performance indicators that are useful for both regulative purposes and branding. Many environmental certifications are thus oriented towards products. These certificates may be linked to voluntary programmes associated with, for example, organic foods, or compulsory programmes, for example, the labelling of energy products regulated through the European Union (EU) energy and energy-related product classification (Eur-Lex, Directive 2009/125/EC). However, a different category is certification management systems, which focus on the firm unit or the company as a whole.