IS THERE A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ENERGY USE AND INNOVATION? CASE OF INDUSTRIAL ENERGY USE IN COLOMBIA

摘要

This paper seeks to contribute to the analysis of factors explaining the variation in industrial energy intensity as an input to the understanding of the relationship between energy use and innovation at the level of individual industrial subsectors, using data from surveys and Colombian official entities. So far, the literature on energy use has privileged the analysis of the causality between energy use and economic growth. However, beyond its importance as a cause or effect of economic development, energy use has gained increasing interest for their environmental impacts. That is why the discussion needs to be developed in the context of the relationship between energy use and innovation, given the strong potential connection between industrial innovation and the variation of energy use. Specifically, evidence has been found on a significant relationship between innovation and increased energy efficiency on the one hand, and between innovation and substitution of energy from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources, on the other. However, this connection requires validation from the combined information from surveys and official databases on innovation and energy, to which appropriate analytical models have not yet been developed up to date. As a contribution to the development of this research front, this paper examines the factors explaining the variation in industrial energy intensity, with basis on the model proposed by Santosh and Narayanan, using data from the Colombian Annual Manufacturing Survey (from 1992 to 2006) and annual statistical data from the Mining and Energy Planning Unit of the Colombian Government. The results highlight the limitations of the available information to carry out the proposed analysis. However, the methodology for the analysis applied here leads to conclude that the variation in energy intensity bears a significant relationship with different explanatory factors in each industrial subsector, which opens the way to explore possible relationships between energy use and innovation when indicators of innovation at the various industrial subsectors are considered.