Investment in energy efficiency: do the characteristics of investments matter?

By Catherine Cooremans. 2012

149 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract“Investment in energy efficiency: do the characteristics of firms matter?” In their famous 1998 paper, DeCanio and Watkins raised the question and answered it affirmatively. Our paper addresses a parallel question: “Investment in energy efficiency: do the characteristics of investments matter?” To answer this question, we first describe our new investment decision-making model, applicable to all investment types. We then discuss our research results, based on questionnaires submitted to finance managers of 35 major electricity consumers in various commercial and industrial sectors. We show how characteristics other than profitability play an important role in investment choices. The investment category influences profitability evaluation, profitability requirement, and, ultimately, the decision made. For half of the firms in our study, energy-efficiency investments did not exist as a category. However, wide diversity regarding investment behavior is observed between firms. Our findings lead to a different explanation of the energy-efficiency gap and open the way for a new approach to promoting energy-efficiency investments, which is briefly discussed in the conclusion.

Subfields: Building and Construction, Finance, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0b3788e0eade99ed79bc1dcfc787de6f2424b7ed

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Building and Construction

1. T. Fleiter
2. Ployplearn Ravivanpong
3. Ernst Worrell
4. J. Schleich
5. Patrik Thollander
6. S. Sorrell

In Finance

1. T. Fleiter
2. Simon Hirzel
3. Ernst Worrell
4. Ployplearn Ravivanpong
5. J. Schleich

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

1. T. Fleiter
2. Ployplearn Ravivanpong
3. Simon Hirzel
4. Ernst Worrell
5. J. Schleich
6. Patrik Thollander
7. S. Sorrell
8. Enrico Cagno

Citations in the corpus

• Adoption of energy-efficiency measures in SMEs—An empirical analysis based on energy audit data from Germany (2012, background): “Cooremans(2011; 2012) conducted interviews with managers in electricity-intensive firms in Switzerlandand found that financial factors are less important for a firm‟s adoption decision than strategic factors.”
• The characteristics of energy-efficiency measures – a neglected dimension (2012, background): “Cooremans (2012) analyses behavior of firms with regard to energy efficiency investments and particularly focuses on how the investment characteristics affect the strategic value of an EEM.”