Drivers of Energy R&D in Manufacturing Industries

Energy R&D can have major social and economic impacts and is a critical factor in addressing the challenges presented by climate change mitigation policies.As well as the energy utilities themselves, firms in other sectors also invest in energy R&D; however, while various studies have examined the determinants of R&D in the former, there are no analyses of energy R&D drivers in other industries.This paper seeks to fill this gap by examining the determinants of investment in energy R&D in non-energy industries.We focus on manufacturing industries where we can differentiate between energy and nonenergy R&D related expenditure.The empirical analysis is carried out for 21 sectors in Spain for the period 2008-2013.To overcome data shortcomings we built a database from several surveys.The data show the importance of taking into account the efforts devoted to energy R&D by the manufacturing sectors in order to have more complete information about the total investment made in energy R&D.The results of the estimations indicate the importance of the energy R&D developed by firms that supply the energy utilities.