Barriers and adoption of energy efficiency measures in buildings of micro, small and medium-sized Portuguese companies

• Autor(a) principal: Cunha, Paulo Jorge Barbosa
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/9751
• topic: Adoção; Agência; Barreiras; Capacidade de Absorção; Eficiência Energética; Pmes; Probit; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

Indispensable nowadays and for future generations, electricity must be used efficiently since it is a scarce resource and have serious repercussions in the environment due to the process of how it is generated. Energy efficiency is vital to reduce energy bills, improve energy security and also as a tool to combat climate change reducing the pressure in the environment. Being the percentage of MSMEs in Portugal 99,9% of the total of enterprises and representing a significant share of the country’s energy consumption justifies the need to carry out this study. Due to the absence of secondary data, an online survey was carried out. Based on theories of agency and absorption capacity it is studied the adoption and barriers to adoption of four crosscutting, ancillary energy efficiency measures (lighting, insulation, heating replacement and heating operations. Evidence is found that absorptive capacity factors are a key factor for adopting more efficient and profitable measures. It may be necessary to create policies to support MSMEs that aim to inform and assist them thus filling the lack of energy managers and energy management systems since these imply costs that smaller companies cannot afford. Although the subsidiaries suffer pressures explained with agency theory, they can also benefit from learning moments. Most of the decisions and barriers considered by MSMEs are not supported either by audits or by energy management professionals since more than 65% of the respondents have never performed an energy audit and more than 82% do not have an energy manager. It is necessary to create more aggressive awareness-raising policies in order to show clearly the individual benefit that each EEM provides to each MSMEs.