Energy consumption and firm characteristics in the Hellenic manufacturing sector

The main purpose of this paper is to present evidence on the relationship between energy consumption and selected firm characteristics in the Hellenic manufacturing industry. Special effort is made to examine the relation of firm energy consumption with some factors designed to reflect firm-level and industry-level characteristics. It is obvious that the paper proposes a microeconomic approach to the relevant questions. The reason is that, although the effects of the macroeconomic activities have been studied satisfactorily in terms of environmental problems, the study at the microeconomic level lags behind. The analysis uses regression models and is performed on a cross-sectional sample of 4,229 firms, classified by manufacturing sector. The results indicate that firms that are more capital intensive are, also, more energy intensive and that the consumption of energy is less in high technology industries. Large firms have an energy cost advantage in relation to smaller firms only in the low energy consuming industries.