Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0 Series: Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers Creation-Date: 1997-08-02 Number: 97-077/3 Author-Name: Erik Verhoef Author-Email: everhoef@feweb.vu.nl Author-Name: Peter Nijkamp Author-Email: pnijkamp@feweb.vu.nl Author-Workplace-Name: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Title: The Adoption of Energy Efficiency Enhancing Technologies Abstract: This paper analyses the adoption of energy-efficiency enhancing technologies by heterogeneous firms. The fact that energy use does not only cause external environmental costs through pollution, but also directly affects the profitability of the firm and hence its behaviour on input and output markets is taken for granted. It is demonstrated that the consideration of such market processes may have important implications for the efficiency of environmental policies concerned with energy use. The analysis focuses in particular on the efficiency of the market-led adoption and diffusion process under variouspolicy regimes. It is shown that the promotion of energy-efficiency enhancing technologies might have unexpected effects in that it could lead to an increase in energy use, while the use of energy taxes might actually reduce the attractiveness of energy-saving technologies. Classification-JEL: D62; Q48; O33 Keywords: environmental regulation; energy; adoption of technologies; heterogeneous firms; externalities File-Url: https://papers.tinbergen.nl/97077.pdf File-Format: application/pdf File-Size: 234748 bytes Handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:19970077