The production of electricity on the basis of renewable energy technologies is a classic example of an impure public good. It is often discriminatively financed by industrial and household consumers, such as in Germany, where the energy-intensive sector benefits from far-reaching exemptions,...

Energy labels have been introduced in many countries to increase consumers' attention to energy use in purchase decisions of durables. In a discrete-choice experiment among about 5,000 households, we implement randomized information treatments to explore the effects of various kinds of energy...

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA), as well as combinations thereof, are widely applied in incentive regulation practice, where the assessment of efficiency plays a major role in regulation design and benchmarking. Using a Monte Carlo simulation experiment,...

Exemptions from costly policy measures are frequently applied to alleviate financial burdens to specific market participants. Using a stated-choice experiment with around 6,000 German household heads, we test how exemptions for low-income households and energy-intensive companies influence the...

This paper presents evidence that the accumulating cost of Germany's ambitious plan to transform its system of energy provision – the so-called Energiewende – is butting up against consumers' willingness-to-pay (WTP) for it. Following a descriptive presentation that traces the German...

Reducing household electricity consumption is of central relevance to climate policy given the share of 12.2% of the residential sector in greenhouse gas emissions. Drawing on data originating from the German Residential Energy Survey (GRECS), this paper estimates the contribution of individual...

Due to the growing share of ”green” electricity generated by renewable energy technologies, the frequency of negative price spikes has substantially increased in Germany. To reduce such events, in 2012, a market premium scheme (MPS) was introduced as an alternative to feed-in tariffs for the...

The seminal studies by Allcott and Mullainathan (2010), Allcott (2011), and Allcott and Rogers (2014) show that social comparison-based home energy reports (HER) are a cost-effective climate policy intervention in the US. Our paper demonstrates the context-dependency of this result. In most...

The building sector offers an important lever for reducing carbon emissions, and carbon pricing is considered as one essential policy instrument to unleash this potential. Yet, carbon pricing in residential buildings faces challenges, especially in rental housing since the financial burden and...

Rebound effects measure the behaviorally induced offset in the reduction of energy consumption following efficiency improvements. Using panel estimation methods and household travel diary data collected in Germany between 1997 and 2009, this study identifies the rebound effect in private...