Energy Use Patterns in German Industry: Evidence from Plant-level Data
-
Sebastian Petrick
,
Katrin Rehdanz
Summary
This paper analyzes energy use and CO2 emissions of more than 78 000 German industrial plants between 1995 and 2006. It is the first study to exploit exceptionally rich energy data that were recently matched to official micro datasets. We document that both energy use and intensity are highly dispersed across plants. When isolating the between-sector variation in energy intensity, there is a strong positive correlation with energy use, CO2 emissions and emission intensity. Yet there is no evidence that the scale of an industry determines its energy intensity. The dispersion of energy use across plants of a given sector, normalized by the median, is positively correlated with that of gross output, but not with the median energy use. Similarly, there is no evidence that the median energy intensity is correlated with the within- sector dispersion of energy intensity or with that of CO2 emissions. Looking at the fuel mix across sectors, we find that more energy intensive industries rely more on fuels other than electricity, although the variability among plants in those industries is extremely high. We also demonstrate that average fuel shares are sensitive to the skewness of the underlying distribution and recommend the use of median fuel shares for better representativeness.
© 2011 by Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart
Articles in the same Issue
- Inhalt / Contents
- Guest Editorial
- Abhandlungen / Original Papers
- Product Diversification and Profitability in German Manufacturing Firms
- Is the Boone-Indicator Applicable? – Evidence from a Combined Data Set of German Manufacturing Enterprises
- Which Parameters Determine the Development of Farm Numbers in Germany?
- Energy Use Patterns in German Industry: Evidence from Plant-level Data
- Global Warming Induced Water-Cycle Changes and Industrial Production – A Scenario Analysis for the Upper Danube River Basin
- The Economic Consequences of One-third Co-determination in German Supervisory Boards
- Buchbesprechungen / Book Reviews
Articles in the same Issue
- Inhalt / Contents
- Guest Editorial
- Abhandlungen / Original Papers
- Product Diversification and Profitability in German Manufacturing Firms
- Is the Boone-Indicator Applicable? – Evidence from a Combined Data Set of German Manufacturing Enterprises
- Which Parameters Determine the Development of Farm Numbers in Germany?
- Energy Use Patterns in German Industry: Evidence from Plant-level Data
- Global Warming Induced Water-Cycle Changes and Industrial Production – A Scenario Analysis for the Upper Danube River Basin
- The Economic Consequences of One-third Co-determination in German Supervisory Boards
- Buchbesprechungen / Book Reviews
