Does technology diffusion help to reduce emission intensity? Evidence from organized manufacturing and agriculture in India

This paper measures the 'emission intensity' of the fifteen organized manufacturing and agricultural sectors in India. Our primary objective and contribution in this paper are in obtaining a direct relation between technological adoption (greater capitalization) and emission intensity at the industry level over a period of fourteen years between 1996 and 2009. We use the Environmentally Extended Input-Output (EEIO) model to calculate the direct, upstream and total emission intensity generated through the entire supply chain of production and consumption. From the fixed effects panel regression results we note that technological adoption helps to reduce emission intensity across industries, although, beyond a critical level it raises the intensity. Importantly, when better technologies are adopted for production of export goods as against non-traded goods, emission falls in a significant way.