Empirical investigation of barriers and drivers to the adoption of energy conservation measures, energy management practices and energy services in the Swedish iron and steel industry

Abstract

The Swedish iron and steel industry is focused on the production of advanced steel grades and accounts for about 5% of the country's final energy consumption. Energy efficiency is according to the European Commission a key element for the transition towards a resource-efficient economy. We investigated four aspects that are associated with the adoption of cost-effective energy conservation measures: barriers, drivers, energy management practices and energy services. We used questionnaires and followup telephone interviews to collect data from members of the Swedish steel association.The heterogeneous observations implied a classification into steel producers and downstream actors. For testing the significance, the Mann-Whitney U test was used. The most important barriers were internal economic and behavioural barriers. Energy service companies, in particular third-party financing, played a minor role. In contrast, high importance was attached to energy management as the most important drivers originated from within the company. Energy management practices showed that steel companies are actively engaged in the topic, but need to raise its prioritisation and awareness within the organisation. When sound energy management practices are included, the participants assessed the cost-effective energy conservation potential to be 9.7%, which was 2.4%higher than the potential for solely adopting cost-effective technologies.

Closing the Energy Efficiency Gap—A Systematic Review of Empirical Articles on Drivers to Energy Efficiency in Manufacturing Firms

“…Research also shows that a clear energy strategy stimulates energy efficiency in firms, e.g., [31,32,74]. A green image and environmental company profile, e.g., [22,75,76], has the same positive effect.…”

“…Energies 2018, 11, 518 8 of 30 in firm surveys [50] or interviews [32,60]. The advantage of implementation as a measure is that it intercepts real technological change.…”

“…This finding is supported by an emerging literature on energy management [46,68,69], and shows that both managers' personal engagement and management practices affect firms' energy efficiency. This includes managers' awareness and sensitivity to environmental issues [40,70], their ambitions, e.g., [24,71], and commitment, e.g., [32,72]. It is also vital that top managers are involved in energy efficiency projects [73], because without such personal involvement managers might perceive energy efficiency improvements as secondary to other investments.…”

“…This study followed the same methodology as prior reviews [19,32,34]. When identifying the most important drivers in the empirical articles, we extracted the three drivers found to be most important in each study.…”

“…Secondly, in accordance with the objective of this review, we extracted the three (some studies reported less than three prominent drivers) drivers in each article found to have the strongest impact on the energy efficiency behavior of the firms. The coding process followed a methodology applied in prior reviews [19,32,34]. In quantitative studies applying inferential statistics we selected the most significant drivers, while in studies using descriptive statistics we selected the highest rated drivers.…”