Emission Intensity of Indian Unorganised Manufacturing Enterprises: Effect of Firm Characteristics and Capital Intensity

Abstract

The unorganised manufacturing sector contributes one third share of overall manufacturing employment and one fifth share of gross value added of the manufacturing sector. Despite its important role in large-scale employment generation, this sector is neglected by the researchers as well as by the policy makers as compared to the focus given on the organised manufacturing sector. The issues of energy intensity, environment emissions and growth of unorganised manufacturing enterprises (UMEs) remain unexplored. The present chapter attempts to estimate the CO2 emission and emission intensity (EI) across UMEs on the basis of NSSO Unit Level data of 62nd, 67th and 73rd rounds. It also analyses the growth of UMEs in relation to CO2 emission and EI. The nature of the sector is very much dispersed. Our study reveals that a portion of unorganised enterprises did not use any energy in their production activities and used manually operated instruments like – handlooms, weaving machines, hand-operated oil and rice mills, etc. The main energy inputs of UMEs are electricity and fuel & lubricants. The CO2 emission is relatively less in UMEs compared to organised manufacturing enterprises. Across the unorganised manufacturing industries, the higher CO2 emission are observed in manufacturing of food product industry and other non-metallic mineral industry. The study found that CO2 EI of UMEs depends on firm-level characteristics like perennial nature, establishment type, urban location and expanding growth status. However, capital intensive UMEs are more polluting.