barriers to energy efficiency a comparison across the german commercial and services sector abstract based on a large sample for the german commercial and services sector this paper econometrically assesses the relevance of various types of barriers to energy efficiency at the sectoral level and across fifteen sub sectors the results at the level of entire sectors suggest that the lack of information about energy consumption patterns and about energy efficiency measures lack of staff time priority setting within organizations and in particular the investor user dilemma are all relevant barriers allowing for sector specific differences in the relevance of these individual barriers yields a more heterogeneous picture the numbers and types of relevant barriers vary across sub sectors and the majority of sub sectors are subject to relatively few barriers the statistically most significant barriers are found for the sub sector of public administrations these findings are robust independent of whether the definition of an organization s energy efficiency performance includes only measures that have actually been realized or also those that are being planned for planned projects however organizations appear to underestimate internal priority setting as a barrier to energy efficiency

modeling technology adoptions for sustainable development under increasing returns uncertainty and heterogeneous agents abstract this paper presents a stylized model of technology adoptions for sustainable development under the three potentially most important stylized facts increasing returns to adoption uncertainty and heterogeneous agents following diverse technology development and adoption strategies the stylized model deals with three technologies and two heterogeneous agents a risk taking one and a risk averse one interactions between the two agents include trade in resources and goods and technological spillover free riding and technology trade with the two heterogeneous agents we run optimizations to minimize their aggregated costs in order to find out what rational behaviors are under different assumptions if the two agents are somehow cooperative by considering uncertain carbon taxes the model also addresses environmental issues as potential driving forces for technology adoptions

does the energy efficiency paradox exist technological progress and uncertainty we explain why firms may choose not to undertake investments inenergy saving technologies that appear profitable from a net presentvalue perspective as future technological advances are inherentlyuncertain and investments in new technology are at least partly irreversible it may pay to postpone investments in energy savingand wait for the arrival of improved varieties this insight casts doubton the existence of so called low hanging fruits in energy saving although we do not wish to deny that organisational failures may alsobe important failure to appreciate the underlying stochasticity oftechnological progress may obscure the insight that there is value inwaiting and costs involved in terminating the option to invest theappetite for low hanging fruits will be less when these costs areincorporated in the analysis we demonstrate that the effect of thearrival rate of new technologies on the adoption lag for a rational firmis ambiguous the same holds for the effect of the expected jump inefficiency of new technologies government policies aimed at enhancingthe adoption of new technologies through stimulation of r d maytherefore be counterproductive

the role of the discount rates in energy systems optimisation models abstract the selection of the social discount rate and the consideration of hurdle rates in energy systems optimisation models affect the creation of sound and comprehensive scenarios useful for energy modellers due to the lack of studies about the use of different discounting options in energy optimisation models the goal of this paper is to fill that gap by establishing the foundations for a debate among energy modellers policy makers and stakeholders in this regard so firstly we introduced the concept of discount rates both social and technology specific including a thorough literature review concerning figures scopes and approaches secondly two models etsap tiam and times norway were used to assess the behaviour of the energy systems at different regionalisation levels europe and norway respectively thirdly we analysed the evolution of the electricity production mixes and system costs for both models and considering several values for the discount rates finally results showed that the energy system is strongly affected by changes in the social discount rate the lower the social discount rate is the higher the renewable contribution the social discounting exerts influence on capital intensive investments so it is quite important to look at the energy carriers pathways fossil renewable transition this is what happens in the case of etsap tiam for europe reversely in the case of times norway as the electricity system is almost 100 renewable it is important to take into account the hurdle rates of the technologies to enrich the competition by including their particular risks and barriers in summary we recommend using a value not higher than 4 5 for the social discount rate for the european countries as well as to include an exhaustive portfolio of hurdle rates for all the technologies included in the energy optimisation model

the aim end use model and its application to forecast japanese carbon dioxide emissions abstract the asian pacific integrated model aim has been developed for predicting greenhouse gas emissions and evaluating policy measures to reduce them two socioeconomic scenarios were assumed and co 2 emissions were predicted based on these scenarios and policy intervention assumptions it is found that mitigating co 2 emissions by 6 to the 1990 level is possible without scaling back productive activities or living standards in japan however this cannot be achieved by relying on the market mechanism alone our analysis shows that it is indispensable to introduce new policies and measures such as a carbon tax and subsidies

beyond case studies barriers to energy efficiency in commerce and the services sector to assess the empirical relevance of various barriers to the diffusion of energy efficient measures we conduct econometric analyses for 19 sub sectors in the german commercial and services sectors results from estimating a separate logit model for each sub sector suggest that the most important barriers are the investor user dilemma and the lack of information about energy consumption patterns typically multiple types of barriers are found to be statistically significant but they vary considerably across sub sectors finally we discuss policy implications for the most relevant barriers

incentives for investment in energy efficiency an econometric evaluation and policy implications technical studies suggest that there exist many opportunities to improve energy efficiency and that a substantial proportion is profitable by current business standards this study deals with the question why so many of these profitable opportunities are not used reasons for not implementing profitable opportunities are idetified and their effect is estimated on the basis ofa survey among dutch firms designed specifically for this study the reasons that prevail indicate what policy measures may accompany energy taxes in the pursuit of energy efficiency improvement in addition energy efficiency elasticities are estimated as well as the factors that determine the elasticities these too indicate opportunities for government policy if it wants to improve the effectiveness of energy taxes

implementation of energy efficiency projects by dutch industry as potentials for energy savings are huge industry can provide a major contribution to energy savings goals this paper focuses on the energy savings realized under the dutch voluntary agreements in the period 2001 2011 participants in these schemes are obliged to plan and implement all measures with a payback period of less than 5 years this paper shows how many of these projects have been implemented and how much savings they generate our findings show that large differences exist in the realized savings between individual companies there is however no significant difference in savings observed between companies that participate in the emission trading system ets and companies that do not although it is impossible to disentangle the drivers behind the implementation of these projects the amount of savings suggest that at least part of them was implemented because of different energy policy instruments

barriers to industrial energy efficiency investments in greece abstract this paper sets out to investigate the main determinants of industrial decision making process with respect to energy efficiency investments based on a survey among greek industries in the empirical analysis probit models are employed the results support that an energy saving campaign should regard industries as subgroups with different needs and different managerial aspects the importance of qualified employees is also established from this survey an energy conservation framework would be more effective if the diffusion of information with regard to industrial energy saving investments is based on investment in human capital

endogenous technological change and emissions the case of the german steel industry abstract the paper starts from the observation that innovation and technical progress are only portrayed superficially in the predominant environmental economic top down models and that the assumption of perfect factor substitution does not correctly mirror actual production conditions in many energy intensive production sectors bottom up models on the other hand neglect macroeconomic interdependencies between the modelled sector and the general economy this paper presents a new modelling approach in an integrated bottom up top down approach based on the example of crude steel production in germany it is demonstrated how technological progress can be portrayed as process related and policy induced and how the technology choice between limitational processes can be explicitly modelled and implemented in the econometric input output model panta rhei the new modelling approach presented permits a process specific analysis of the impacts of changed frame conditions the effects of which on the choice of technology on the one hand and the technological progress on the other can be described endogenous to the model these features are demonstrated in a co2 tax simulation results show that policy induced technological change is besides a switch in production processes the major source of co2 reduction for the steel sector

administering the window abstract this paper presents a game theoretic model of nonprice rationing at the discount window it focuses on the federal reserve s use of frequency guidelines and harassment to deter excessive use of the discount window by banks the model investigates the role of the discount officer the effect of uncertainty and the credibility of threats used by the discount officer to deter excessive borrowing by banks

where are the industrial technologies in energy economy models an innovative cge approach for steel production in germany top down computable general equilibrium cge models are used extensively for analysis of energy and climate policies energy intensive industries are usually represented in top down economic models as abstract economic production functions commonly of the constant elasticity of substitution ces or translog functional form this study explores methods for improving the realism of energy intensive industries in top down economic models we replace a ces production function with a set of specific technologies and provide a comparison between the traditional production function approach in cge models and an approach with separate technologies for making iron and steel in particular we investigate the response of the iron and steel sector to a set of co2 price scenarios our technology based integrated approach permits a choice between several technologies for producing iron and steel and allows for shifts in technology characteristics over time towards best practice innovative technologies in addition the general equilibrium framework allows us to analyze interactions between production sectors for example between electricity generation and iron and steel production investigate simultaneous economy wide reactions and capture the main driving forces of greenhouse gas emissions reductions under a climate policy we conclude that technology specific effects are crucial for the economic assessment of climate policies in particular the effects relating to process shifts and fuel input structure

the efficiency paradox bureaucratic and organizational barriers to profitable energy saving investments abstract the paradox of why profitable energy saving investments are not undertaken continues to provoke debate the underlying phenomenon might be called the efficiency paradox because it represents a case in which business firms which are often presumed or taken axiomatically to be economically efficient make decisions that do not maximize profits new data from one of the us environmental protection agency s voluntary pollution prevention programs enables this paradox to be explored statistically the data show that both the level and variation in returns to lighting upgrade investments cannot be explained by standard economic models substantial gains in energy efficiency can be achieved without sacrificing profitability both economic and organizational factors account for some of the variation in observed returns to these investments but the results suggest a need for improved and more comprehensive theories of the investment behavior of firms and other organizations

a plant specific bottom up approach for assessing the cost effective energy conservation potential and its ability to compensate rising energy related costs in the german iron and steel industry abstract germany produces more steel than any other european country 42 7 mt steel in 2012 the steel production accounts for 22 of germany s final industrial energy consumption we assessed the potential of 32 identified energy conservation measures by deriving fuel electricity and co2 conservation cost curves we developed a methodology which respects the current efficiency of individual plants and two different system boundaries a process boundary for benchmarking measures and a facility boundary for calculating the total energy conservation potential with moderate electricity and carbon price developments for the investigation period 2013 2035 the cost effective conservation potentials are estimated to be 11 7 for fuel 2 2 for electricity and 12 2 for fuel and process related co2 emissions compared to the industry s final energy use and co2 emissions in 2012 for the sensitivity analysis we varied electricity and carbon prices and our results showed that adopting cost effective energy conservation measures can compensate for rising energy prices but the extent differs between the production routes while the eaf route could compensate up to 50 higher electricity prices the options for the bf bof route to reduce the fossil fuel consumption are limited thus the energy related production costs of the bf bof route increased in average by 6 13 between 2013 and 2035

forecasting global developments in the basic chemical industry for environmental policy analysis the chemical sector is the largest industrial energy user but detailed analysis of its energy use developments lags behind other energy intensive sectors a cost driven forecasting model for basic chemicals production is developed accounting for regional production costs demand growth and stock turnover the model determines the global production capacity placement implementation of energy efficient best practice technology bpt and global carbon dioxide co2 emissions for the period 2010 2030 subsequently the effects of energy and climate policies on these parameters are quantified about 60 of new basic chemical production capacity is projected to be placed in non oecd regions by 2030 due to low energy prices while global production increases by 80 between 2010 and 2030 the oecd s production capacity share decreases from 40 to 20 and global emissions increase by 50 energy pricing and climate policies are found to reduce 2030 co2 emissions by 5 15 relative to the baseline developments by increasing bpt implementation maximum bpt implementation results in a 25 reduction further emission reductions require measures beyond energy efficient technologies the model is useful to estimate general trends related to basic chemicals production but improved data from the chemical sector is required to expand the analysis to additional technologies and chemicals

macroeconomic effects of efficiency policies for energy intensive industries the case of the uk climate change agreements 2000 2010 abstract this paper reports a study modeling the uk climate change agreements ccas and related energy efficiency policies for energy intensive industrial sectors bottom up estimates of the effects of these policies are introduced into the energy demand equations of a top down dynamic econometric model of the uk economy with fifty industrial sectors mdm e3 this allowed estimation of the effects of the reduced energy use for the outputs from the sectors i e the reductions in unit costs of the energy intensive industries on the demand for their outputs both in the uk and in the export markets the model is solved as a counterfactual 2000 2005 and as a projection 2005 2010 in a series of scenarios to allow estimation of the effects of the policies on inflation and growth as well as on overall energy demand and co 2 emissions the system wide final energy reductions is estimated to be 4 2 mtoe or 2 6 of total final demand for energy by 2010 including a rebound effect of 19 with negligible effects on inflation and a slight increase in economic growth through improved international competitiveness

modeling of industrial energy consumption an introduction and context industrial energy accounts for roughly one third of total global energy consumption and is expected to continue to use a similar share in the foreseeable future however this is one of the hardest end uses to analyze model and forecast the reasons for modeling industrial energy consumption are as varied as the ways in which energy is used in production processes this has led to the application of a broad set of emperical tools from several different disciplines in this article we provide an introduction and context for a compendium or survey of the methods used in this area this special issue of energy economics is designed to provide both newcomers and accomplished researchers with an overview of the current state of development in the are of industrial energy modeling

analysis of co2 emissions reduction potential in secondary production and semi fabrication of non ferrous metals industrial sector growth in developing countries requires the provision of alternatives to guarantee sustainable development improving energy efficiency and fuel switching are two measures to reduce co2 emissions in the industrial sector with natural gas and low carbon electricity as the most feasible options in the short term in this work a linear programming optimization model has been developed to study the potential of energy efficiency improvement and fuel substitution for co2 emissions reduction at national level in the non ferrous metals industry the energy resource end use device allocation problem in secondary metal production and semi fabrication has been modeled using this model the particular case of colombia where low carbon electricity is available has been studied by improving energy efficiency energy use and co2 emissions can be reduced significantly 73 and 72 respectively at negative costs further co2 emissions reductions up to 88 are possible with fuel switching to low carbon electricity increasing the costs for the energy system however cost reductions caused by energy efficiency improvement outweigh cost increments of fuel switching benefits achieved with fuel substitution using low carbon electricity can be lost if hydropower is not available in such a case efficient natural gas fired end use devices are preferable

modelling and forecasting the demand for natural gas in pakistan abstract this study examines both the short and long term dynamics of natural gas consumption in pakistan through an econometric model sector specific income price and cross price elasticities of natural gas demand are estimated over the period 1978 2011 the estimated income elasticities indicate that real gdp per capita exerts a larger impact on gas consumption as compared to its price the price and cross price elasticities are relatively low indicating consumers indifference in pakistan towards price escalation they neither decrease gas consumption nor try to explore less expensive substitutes for natural gas a validation of the estimated demand equations is performed showing high degree of accuracy through tracking the historical data in order to determine the future outlook of natural gas demand sectoral equations are simulated as baseline both moderate and extreme demand scenarios are projected for the period 2012 2020 ex post simulation resulting through baseline scenario suggests that the power sector is more likely to occupy top position in terms of natural gas consumption it is expected that the natural gas consumption would reach 734 062 mmcft by 2020 followed by the transport sector 238 943 mmcft industrial sector 541 869 mmcft residential sector 304 821 mmcft and the commercial sector 72 784 mmcft furthermore simulation results based on moderate and extreme scenarios reveal that a deliberate increase in natural gas prices reduces per capita natural gas consumption significantly over the forecast time horizon 2012 2020 the findings of this study have significant implications with respect to energy conservation and economic development particularly price and income elasticities have practical relevance for appropriate pricing and income policies additionally forecast results can provide useful support for designing an appropriate infrastructure and investment plan with reference to gas market in future

the characteristics of energy efficiency measures a neglected dimension abstract the diffusion of cost effective energy efficiency measures eems in firms is often surprisingly slow this phenomenon is usually attributed to a variety of barriers which have been the focus of numerous studies over the last two decades however many studies treat eems homogenously and assume they have few inherent differences apart from their profitability we argue that complementing such analyses by considering the characteristics of eems in a structured manner can enhance the understanding of eem adoption for this purpose we suggest a classification scheme for eems in industry which aims to provide a better understanding of their adoption by industrial firms and to assist in selecting and designing energy efficiency policies the suggested classification scheme is derived from the literature on the adoption of eems and the related fields including the diffusion of innovations eco innovations and advanced manufacturing technology our proposed scheme includes 12 characteristics based on the relative advantage the technical and the information context of the eem applying this classification scheme to six example eems demonstrates that it can help to systematically explain why certain eems diffuse faster than others furthermore it provides a basis for identifying policies able to increase the rate of adoption

absence of value an analysis of investment allocation decisions by institutional plan sponsors to determine whether the investment decisions of institutional plan sponsors contribute to their asset values this study used a dataset of 80 000 yearly observations of institutional investment product assets accounts and returns for 1984 2007 results show that plan sponsors may not be acting in their stakeholders best interests when they make rebalancing or reallocation decisions investment products that receive contributions subsequently underperform products experiencing withdrawals over one three and five years for investment decisions among equity fixed income and balanced products most of the underperformance can be attributed to product selection tests suggest that these results are not attributable to survivorship or other biases much like individual investors who switch mutual funds at the wrong time institutional investors do not appear to create value from their investment decisions

assessing the impacts of preferential procurement on low carbon building abstract the significance of global warming is shaping building procurement with much of the effort aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions through a preferential bidding mechanism however only a limited number of studies have quantitatively estimated the potential impact of bid preference on the emission reduction from building construction the aim of this paper is to improve our understanding of how bid discounts change owners procurement costs and the magnitudes of emission mitigation a two stage optimization model is designed to help the owner determine the discount rate that would automatically control the emission of the awarded contract within a desired level the goal is for bidders to regard emission reduction efforts as an investment with returns coming in the form of an increased chance of winning the bid our results imply that for the building retrofit project studied herein a discount rate of 0 6 is suggested for every percentage of emission reduction this discount level reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 28 2 while raising procurement costs by 3 7 relative to a non preference mechanism the increased procurement costs can be partially compensated under existing cap and trade scheme the results show that the choice of discount significantly alters bidders efforts on emission mitigation and emission control cost can be minimized with the proposed optimization algorithm

models of technology diffusion abstract the literature on new technology diffusion is vast and it spills over many conventional disciplinary boundaries this paper surveys the literature by focusing on alternative explanations of the dominant stylized fact that the usage of new technologies over time typically follows an s curve the most commonly found model which is used to account for this model is the so called epidemic model which builds on the premise that what limits the speed of usage is the lack of information available about the new technology how to use it and what it does the leading alternate model is often called the probit model which follows from the premise that different firms with different goals and abilities are likely to want to adopt the new technology at different times in this model diffusion occurs as firms of different types gradually adopt it there are actually many ways to generate an s curve and the third class of models which we examine are models of density dependence popularized by population ecologists in these models the twin forces of legitimation and competition help to establish new technologies and then ultimately limit their take up finally we look at models in which the initial choice between different variants of the new technology affect the subsequent diffusion speed of the chosen technology such models often rely on information cascades which drive herd like adoption behaviour when a particular variant is finally selected

a review of optimal energy policy instruments on industrial energy efficiency programs rebound effects and government policies abstract industrial energy efficiency programs ieeps are defined as one of the most popular government policies that aim to reduce energy consumption in industrial energy intensive sectors in this paper we review and classify the most important academic studies that have addressed the environmental and economic aspects of ieeps using a systematic review the classification of energy policy instruments has been developed based on an analytical approach we discuss also the outputs benefits and barriers of ieeps besides a comprehensive argument about the restrictive policies on the rebound effects made after the implementation of these programs the results disclose that china usa and sweden are the most addressed countries on ieeps and their applications in this regard incentive energy policies e g voluntary agreements and subsidies have been applied more than others in the last decade furthermore most of the reviewed studies emphasize energy price reform as an effective practical policy while a few analytical methods can be seen to help policy makers determine the optimal levels of decision variables finally according to the state of the art analysis the authors provide some novel recommendations to improve the performance of ieeps using some restrictive policies on the negative impacts of rebound effects

triggers and barriers to energy efficiency measures in the ceramic cement and lime sectors evaluating and understanding the interplay of barriers to the diffusion of energy efficiency measures is highly relevant because if policies are effective in overcoming these barriers co2 emissions can be decreased at low cost the study aims to understand how managers make decisions to invest in energy efficiency how perceived barriers affect these decisions and how policy can overcome these barriers we apply neo classical economic theory as well as insights from transaction cost economics and behavioural economics to understand why hurdle rates even when omitted costs and risk are taken into account are higher than the weighted average cost of capital we find that internal capital budgeting rules and the effort of studying technical feasibility and profitability are relevant to understanding the efficiency gap the results indicate that the voluntary agreement and the emission trading scheme are complementary addressing different barriers in different contexts

the impact of increased efficiency in the industrial use of energy a computable general equilibrium analysis for the united kingdom the conventional wisdom is that improving energy efficiency will lower energy use however there is an extensive debate in the energy economics policy literature concerning rebound effects these occur because an improvement in energy efficiency produces a fall in the effective price of energy services the response of the economic system to this price fall at least partially offsets the expected beneficial impact of the energy efficiency gain in this paper we use an economy energy environment computable general equilibrium cge model for the uk to measure the impact of a 5 across the board improvement in the efficiency of energy use in all production sectors we identify rebound effects of the order of 30 50 but no backfire no increase in energy use however these results are sensitive to the assumed structure of the labour market key production elasticities the time period under consideration and the mechanism through which increased government revenues are recycled back to the economy

the energy efficiency gap what does it mean abstract as renewed attention has been given by policy makers to energy conservation issues it has frequently been asserted that an energy efficiency gap exists between actual and optimal energy use the critical questions is how to define the optimal level of energy efficiency this paper seeks to disentangle some confusing strands of argument that are frequently brought to bear on this question by identifying the major conceptual issues that determine the set of feasible answers we identify five separate and distinct notions of optimality the economists economic potential the technologists economic potential hypothetical potential the narrow social optimum and the true social optimum each of these has associated with it a corresponding definition of the energy efficiency gap our analysis demonstrates that necessary preconditions for identifying the right measure of the energy efficiency gap include understanding and disentangling market failure and non market failure explanations for the gradual diffusion of energy efficient technologies

save production a bottom up energy model for dutch industry and agriculture a new version of the model save production simulates the development of energy use in the dutch industry and agriculture including combined heat and power generation the model disaggregates national energy consumption into fuel types industrial sectors energy functions and energy technologies simulation is based on microeconomic investment behavior examples of model application show results on the penetration of combined heat and power in relation to policy instruments such as co2 prices electricity price support and investment subsidies policies that discriminate on co2 emissions result in a slightly more efficient heat and power generation tailored to the dutch situation save production is well equipped to generate outlooks for the dutch industrial and agricultural energy use and for analyzing the role of policies in detail its main strength lies in the middle term simulation of decision making on energy saving technologies and analysis of policy effects specific precautions are required when the model is used for analysis on the longer term for simulating extreme policies or for the analysis of extremely fluctuating energy prices

barriers to energy efficiency in industrial bottom up energy demand models a review the goal of this paper is to review bottom up models for industrial energy demand with a particular focus on their capability to model barriers to the adoption of energy efficient technologies the integration of barriers into the models is an important prerequisite for a more detailed and realistic modeling of policies for energy efficiency particularly with the emergence of more and more varying policy instruments it also becomes crucial for the models to take account of these policies as well as the barriers they address in a more realistic way our review revealed that despite the broadly evident existence of market failures and barriers for energy efficient technologies they are only partly and in a rather aggregated form considered in today s bottom up models the state of the art bottom up model is based on an explicit representation of the technology stock and considers the costs of energy efficiency options in detail but with regard to barriers most models only make use of an aggregated approach like an adjusted discount rate while some models do not even consider technology costs and energy prices but instead use exogenous technology diffusion rates other more advanced models took first steps towards considering barriers in more detail the latter allows differentiation between multiple parameters that influence technology adoption still even in the most advanced models only a few of the observed barriers are explicitly considered at the same time new approaches to considering barriers like uncertainty or the slow spread of information are being developed in other disciplines we conclude the paper by summarizing promising ways to improve representation of barriers in bottom up models