Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

CERE Working Papers,
CERE - the Center for Environmental and Resource Economics

No 2014:10: Convergence of carbon dioxide performance across Swedish industrial sectors An environmental index approach

Runar Brännlund (), Tommy Lundgren () and Patrik Söderholm
Additional contact information
Runar Brännlund: CERE, Postal: Department of Economics, Umeå University, S-901 87, Umeå, Sweden
Tommy Lundgren: CERE, Postal: Department of Economics, Umeå University, S-901 87, Umeå, Sweden
Patrik Söderholm: Economics Unit, Luleå University of Technology, Postal: Economics Unit, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden

Abstract: The overall objective of the paper is to analyze convergence of CO2 emission intensity across manufacturing sectors in Sweden. Our approach differs from previous work on carbon convergence in that it employs a theoretical framework to construct a CO2 performance index, which explicitly takes into account that industrial firms produce good as well as bad outputs. This index is then used as the dependent variable in a growth-type regression equation. We employ a data set covering 14 industrial sectors over the time period 1990-2008. The results suggest the presence of conditional beta-convergence in CO2 performance among the industrial sectors in Sweden. Moreover, the speed of convergence varies significantly in the sense that the higher the capital intensity is, the lower is the convergence rate to the different steady states. This reflects the importance of – and in part the costs associated with – capital turnover to achieve a transition towards lower CO2 emission paths.

Keywords: convergence; carbon dioxide emission intensity; industry; Sweden

JEL-codes: Q30

24 pages, September 12, 2014

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