Barriers and drivers for enterprise energy efficiency: An exploratory study for industrial transfer in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region

Government, industry, and corporate behaviors all encourage companies to actively implement energy efficiency measures (EEMs) but few empirical studies have identified the specific barriers and drivers of EEMs and their relative importance. This paper aims to better understand the barriers and drivers of EEMs to help determine how policies and regulations support their proliferation. We conducted a questionnaire survey of the enterprises in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei industrial transfer, carefully reviewed related policies, and built the Condition-Resource-Management (CRM) model to screen out the main factors that affect the improvement of energy efficiency. The mechanism of enterprise energy efficiency improvement was analyzed from the three different perspectives of EEMs (implementation steps, factors, and actors), and the main factors in each stage of the decision-making process were identified. The results show that in the seven steps of EEMs, the importance of awareness and investment priorities is great. Both economic and regulatory barriers and drivers have a significant effect on the improvement of energy efficiency via profit and behavioral impacts. Finally, based on the analysis results, we propose that policy makers need to (a) pay more attention to economic and legal tools and (b) appropriately increase supervision and punishment, and (c) government should provide more financial and technical support to encourage enterprises to improve energy efficiency. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.