Increasing energy and resource efficiency through innovation: an explorative analysis using innovation survey data

Klaus Rennings and Christian Rammer

No 09-056, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: Energy and resource efficiency innovations (EREIs) are often seen as win-win opportunities for both the economic and the environmental performance of firms. It is thus worth asking how the innovation activities and performance of firms with regard to energy and resource efficiency look like: Do EREI firms follow distinct innovation strategies? Do EREIs spur or limit innovation success? And what are the particular features of EREI firms compared to conventional innovators? Using German innovation data, we find that EREIs are determined by a larger set of technology-push and market-pull factors. On the supply side, R&D budgets, research infrastructure and networking with other firms are important factors of influence, while on the demand side increased productivity and cost reductions are decisive, as well as improved product quality. On the other hand, EREIs are complex activities which also need regulatory incentives. Although EREIs are not more successful compared to conventional innovations, they contribute substantially to the economic success of firms.

Keywords: Resource efficiency; energy efficiency; environmental innovations; innovation surveys (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O31 O33 Q01 Q55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-eff, nep-ene, nep-env, nep-ino, nep-knm, nep-mic and nep-sbm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (79)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/28247/1/609867199.PDF (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Increasing Energy and Resource Efficiency through Innovation: An Explorative Analysis Using Innovation Survey Data (2009)
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:zbw:zewdip:09056

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().