In recent years, the Federal Trade Commission has pursued few cases alleging that companies have engaged in deceptive advertising in regard to claims about their “green” practices. But that could change to some extent next year.

The U.S. business community is hoping that the updating will clarify gray areas, and therefore make it easier for companies to understand and adhere to green-related advertising regulations.

However, it’s also likely that once the new standards are in place, the FTC will seek to establish legal precedents by going after companies that appear to have been using deceptive green advertising claims, according to David Young, partner in the legal firm Goodwin Procter LLP and a specialist in counseling corporations and organizations in environmental and other regulatory matters.

The FTC brought 37 cases involving environmental marketing claims between 1990 and 2000–but it has brought no cases specifically coming out of the Green Guides’ guidelines since 2000, Young notes.

In a speech in June, an FTC commissioner, J. Thomas Rosch, stressed that the Guides have proven to be “an extremely helpful framework to enforce truthful and accurate advertising.” Speaking only for himself, he said, he believes that no FTC Green Guides cases have been brought in recent years for at least two reasons. One is that the commission has taken into account the need for companies to absorb the Guides’ “teaching”; another is that alternatives to FTC legal enforcement exist. These include self-regulation and private enforcement that “far surpass anything we saw in the early ’70s,” he said.

The National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, the investigative arm of the U.S. advertising industry’s self-regulatory process, reports that it has issued nearly 30 decisions involving environmental marketing claims–many of which have called for modifying claims. Compliance with NAD decisions is voluntary, but the NAD reports high compliance rates. Advertisers that refuse to participate in the self-regulatory process or do not implement the NAD’s recommendations are referred to the government.