# Evolution of Technology and Technology Governance
## 3 Results
### 'Four Seasons' of a Technology
#### 3.1.1 Regulatory Instruments of the Technological Evolution  
Best Available Techniques  
The impact of regulatory factors on technological development is often underestimated due to the belief that governmental regulation is characteristic of a socialist economic system. But recent history provides many examples of technological processes and products to complete their life cycle under pressure from international or national regulatory systems. Perhaps the most-known example is the prohibition of ozone-depleting substance manufacture in accordance with the Montreal Protocol of the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer [29]. Let us leave to climatologists and marketing experts debates about the role of DuPont and a possible slowdown in global temperature growth due to a decrease in freon concentration in the atmospheric air, but no one could deny that the 'green light' to the market entry of a next-gen refrigerants was due to in no small part to the international regulations. At the same time, the main scientific studies were conducted during the discussion of the expected regulatory changes, their feasibility, their acceptability, and the overall readiness of certain countries to ratify the Montreal Protocol and/or not. Another example is the concept of Best Available Techniques (BAT). This was developed almost simultaneously in Europe, America and South-East Asia, as well as in the Soviet Union. It is interesting that in the USA, Canada and Russia the term 'technology' is preferred, while the EU legislation uses another word, 'techniques'. According to the Cambridge Dictionary of English Language, a 'technique' is a way of doing something that needs skill, thought and planning [30]. It is an undeniably wider remit than 'technology', which is described in Encyclopedia Britannica as \"the application of scientific knowledge to the practical aims of human life or, as it is sometimes phrased, to the change and manipulation of the human environment\" [31]. This is why, speaking of Best Available Techniques, we mean both production technology, environmental protection techniques (stack gases and wastewater treatment), automation systems, and self-monitoring and management systems applied to operate an installation [16]. The essence of Best Available Techniques, regardless of how exactly the concept of BAT is described and interpreted in legislative acts, is that in order to ensure high resource efficiency and environmental performance, large enterprises of key economic sectors must use a combination of proven technological, technical and managerial solutions [32; 33]. Since 1996, EU Member States have been implementing Directive 96/61/EC on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC), replaced in 2010 by the Industrial Emissions Directive [32]. The directives state that large installations engaged in activities covered by provisions laid in these legal acts must demonstrate compliance with BAT and obtain Integrated Environmental Permits (IEP). The list of IPPC/IED installations includes the EU's key sectors of the fourth technological paradigm: thermal power, chemical and petrochemical industries, construction materials, ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, the pulp and paper industry, and intensive animal husbandry. BAT Reference Documents are developed for each industry with the purpose to systematize information on the current status of a particular sector, applied technologies and technical solutions, and also (which is very important) on resource efficiency and environmental performance. From technology datasets, BAT-related solutions are selected by technical working groups while taking into account a number of criteria: these criteria are listed below (quoted) in full accordance with their description given in the EU legislation [32; 33]:  
1.