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Do Energy Efficient Firms Have Better Access to Finance?

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  • Philipp-Bastian Brutscher, Pauline Ravillard, and Gregor Semieniuk

Abstract

Improving energy efficiency quickly is key to mitigating climate change and requires improvements implemented in firms. As these require upfront investments, good access to external finance is important. Theory suggests that information asymmetries may prevent lenders from including energy efficiency into their lending assessment, even though higher energy efficiency increases firm cost-competitiveness and its collateral value. Empirically, little is known about the impact of energy efficiency on access to external finance. For the first time, we examine empirically the effect of a firm's higher energy efficiency on their ability to obtain loans in European Union countries by exploiting a unique firm-level dataset. We find that energy efficiency has no effect on the ability of a firm to obtain external financing compared to other indicators on the financial or operational health of the firm. The results reveal an unexploited potential for energy efficiency policy to signal when firms are energy efficient.

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  • Philipp-Bastian Brutscher, Pauline Ravillard, and Gregor Semieniuk, 2021. "Do Energy Efficient Firms Have Better Access to Finance?," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 6).
    • Handle: RePEc:aen:journl:ej42-6-ravillar
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    Cited by:

    1. Caporale, Guglielmo Maria & Donati, Cristiana & Spagnolo, Nicola, 2023. "Small and medium sized European firms and energy saving measures: The role of financing," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    2. Guglielmo Maria Caporale & Cristiana Donati & Nicola Spagnolo, 2022. "Small and Medium Sized European Firms and Energy Efficiency Measures: A Probit Analysis," CESifo Working Paper Series 10066, CESifo.

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