Research to inform policy needs to be carefully planned and designed with a realistic scope and precise focus to achieve useful results. Research under Output 3 combined a literature review and internet search with interviews with manufacturing sector organizations in the United States and the European Union. However, the TA team had difficulty obtaining meaningful replies to advance the study. In the TA consultant report, the team acknowledged that they may have asked the wrong questions. It would probably have been better to concentrate the interviews on the development and adoption of specific technologies rather than on the overall general issues of energy efficiency, emission control, and compliance issues proposed by the TA team. Likely as a result, the incomplete draft consultant report conclusions seemed narrowly based. They evolve mainly from the literature review and general policy analyses, not from the firm-level data and information needed for a systematic analysis of actual experience of what factors influenced successful development and uptake of new technologies. Therefore, benefits could be generated by corroborating the conclusions presented in the TA consultant report through more field evidence-based research.
Improving Energy Efficiency, Emission Control, and Compliance Management of the Manufacturing Industr