Environmental policies and energy efficiency investments. An industry-level analysis

Highlights: • The role of different environmental policy measures on energy efficiency investment is examined. • Four different instruments (regulation, taxes, subsidies, and tax credits) at industry level are considered. • Subsidies seem to promote energy efficiency investments. • Operation costs and external competition favour energy efficiency innovations. Energy efficiency is considered a very cost-effective way to mitigate air emissions and improve the economic performance of manufacturing industries. Many countries have implemented measures to increase energy efficiency in industry. These measures include command-and-control and market-based interventions, and they may be specific to a particular firm or sector. Although these policies may have benefits, the results of the empirical analyses of the effects of these interventions on the adoption of energy-saving technologies are not conclusive. The main objective of this paper is to examine the role of different environmental policy measures on energy efficiency investment. We construct a database from several sources for Spanish industries for the period 2010–2017. This gives us information on a broad range of factors and policy instruments that may drive energy efficiency investments. We consider four different instruments: regulation, taxes, subsidies, and tax credits.