Energy efficiency determinants: an empirical analysis of Spanish innovative firms

Maria Costa-Campi, Jose Garcia-Quevedo and Agustí Segarra ()
Additional contact information
Agustí Segarra: GRIT, CREIP, Rovira i Virgili University

No 2014/10, Working Papers from Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB)

Abstract: This paper examines the extent to which innovative Spanish firms pursue improvements in energy efficiency (EE) within their innovation objectives. The increase in energy consumption and its impact on greenhouse gas emissions justifies the greater attention being paid to energy efficiency and especially to industrial EE. The ability of manufacturing companies to innovate and improve their EE has a substantial influence on reaching the objectives regarding climate change mitigation. Despite the effort to design more efficient energy policies, the EE determinants in manufacturing firms have been little studied in the empirical literature. From an exhaustive sample of Spanish manufacturing firms and using a probit model, we examine the energy efficiency determinants to those firms that have innovated. To carry out the econometric analysis, we use a panel data coming from CIS (Community Innovation Survey) for the period 2008-2011 that includes 4,458 manufacturing firms. Among firm characteristics, the empirical results underline the importance of size in facilitating the adoption of technology that improves energy efficiency; while among the factors related to companies’ behavior, the favorable influence of organizational innovations and innovations related with the reduction of environmental impacts stand out as the main factors in carrying out innovations with the objective of increasing energy efficiency.

Keywords: Energy efficiency; corporate targets; innovation; Community Innovation Survey (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O31 Q40 Q55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://ieb.ub.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/2014-IEB-WorkingPaper-10.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Energy efficiency determinants: An empirical analysis of Spanish innovative firms (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ieb:wpaper:doc2014-10

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().