Development and utilization of energy-related technologies, economic performance and the role of policy instruments

The present study investigates the effects of energy-related technologies on economic performance at firm level. We distinguish clearly between adoption and use of energy-related technologies (process innovation in the broad sense) and product innovation in energy-related fields. We take into consideration four energy-related policy instruments (and expected demand for energy-related new products and services). We investigate the possibility of indirect effects of policy on performance via adoption or innovation by interacting adoption and innovation variables with policy instrument dummies. We test our hypotheses not only for the pooled data but also separately for the three countries (Austria, Germany, Switzerland) that are taken into consideration in this study.

We find a positive direct effect of investment expenditures for energy-related technologies on labour productivity – that measure intensity of adoption of energy-related technologies – and a positive indirect effect of energy taxes via investment in energy-related technologies. Further, we find positive direct and indirect effects of regulation, standards and voluntary agreements via the adoption of production-related technologies and for technologies for the generation of renewal energy sources. We find neither direct nor indirect effects of the sales of innovative energy-related products – that measure product innovation in energy-related products – on labour productivity.

No differences among the three countries could be detected with respect to investment in energy-related technologies and sales of innovative energy-related products. The indirect effects of regulation and standards and voluntary agreements can be primarily traced back to German firms.

Arvanitis, Spyros, Michael Peneder, Christian Rammer, Tobias Stucki and Martin Woerter (2017), Development and utilization of energy-related technologies, economic performance and the role of policy instruments, Journal of Cleaner Production 159 , 47-61