| Περίληψη: | This thesis discusses two fundamental research topics in energy and environmental economics. In particular, we investigate issues and worries that are of interest to those who want to examine efficiency problems concerning the climate, energy and environmental conditions. This thesis consists of three distinct, but related essays, that concentrate on the industries of the manufacturing sector across European countries from 1995 to 2011 period, whilst their findings and conclusions could be generally implemented from researchers to policymakers.
The first part of this doctoral thesis examines the concept of industrial energy
efficiency for different European countries. As the economic growth of industries
continuously require higher quantities of energy use, policymakers have to set specific industrial energy efficiency targets, rules and obligations so as energy intensity to be reduced and energy efficiency to be improved. Moreover, the investigation of possible factors that could potentially affect the notion of energy efficiency consist
a further research question of this thesis. The results of the nonparametric approach indicate that European industrial energy efficiency declines for the majority of industries whilst the consideration that industries confront each other solely on the boundaries of a national level lead easily to overestimated energy efficiency scores. On the other hand, the econometric results suggest that path dependence phenomena and climatic features have a strong relationship with energy efficiency while energy mix displays both linear and non-linear relationship with it. The second part of this doctoral thesis analyses the levels of eco-efficiency
across European industries of the manufacturing sector. The relationship between
economic and ecological characteristics is important to be examined in order to
evaluate the impact of industrial activities on the environment. Employing a nonparametric approach and taking into account distinct undesirable outputs from the industrial production process, it is revealed that capital and energy intensive industries perform eco-inefficiently. Furthermore, a convergence hypothesis is rejected for European industries suggesting that different steady states exist and separate policies are necessary for every country. The third part of this doctoral thesis investigates further the concept of eco-efficiency. In this sense, we incorporate in our analysis a wider spectrum of scenarios targeting at a more integrated picture regarding industrial eco-efficiency performance. The utilization of a unified technological regime and the investigation of a catch-up hypothesis disclose that the speed of eco-efficiency convergence increases throughout the years whilst the case of CO2 emissions presents an erratic behavior compared to the other undesirable outputs.
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