Promoting investments in energy saving technologies is an important means forachieving environmental goals. Unfortunately, the empirical evidence on successconditions of policies isscarce. Based on a survey among Dutch firms, this paper sets out to identify thefactors that determine the...

This paper analyses the adoption of energy-efficiency enhancing technologies by heterogeneous firms. The fact that energy use does not only cause external environmental costs through pollution, but also directly affects the profitability of the firm and hence its behaviour on input and output...

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a modification of a standard four input production process where energy is used in an inefficient way due to partly unnecessary waste of energy. In this production process, R&D investment is an additional input in order to improve energy efficiency. It...

This paper considers the problem of how a government, having decided to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, identifies the policy or mix of policies that achieves this reduction at the lowest possible net economic cost. This involves accounting for the fact that each potential policy for reducing...

The paper models the combined use of taxation and voluntary agreements when there is asymmetric information between the regulator and industry on the firms' actual emissions. The model incorporates the following features: 1) the regulator does not know the firm's special production...

Experience with existing multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) shows that trade measures agreed to within the MEAs themselves may not necessarily lead to a dispute between parties. On the contrary, there is a great chance that disputes may arise from national measures undertaken to fulfil...

Die in den Jahren 2009 und 2014 in Kraft getretenen Energieeinsparverordnungen (EnEV), die jeweils erhebliche Verschärfungen der baulichen Anforderungen beinhalteten, hat den Baukosten im Wohnungsneubau einen Schub gegeben. Die Effekte verteilten sich allerdings jeweils auf mehrere Jahre und...

Bei der Energiewende geht es aus ökonomischer Sicht darum, ihre klima- und umweltpolitisch Ziele so zu erreichen, dass auch die beiden anderen Eckpunkte des energiepolitischen Zieldreiecks, die Wirtschaftlichkeit und die Versorgungssicherheit, angemessene Berücksichtigung finden. Der...

In this paper we use panel data from a survey conducted on 30 Swiss utilities to estimate the impact of demand-side management (DSM) activities on residential electricity demand using DSM spending and an energy efficiency score. Using the variation in DSM activities within utilities and across...

It is an ongoing debate how to increase the adoption of energy-efficient light bulbs and household appliances in the presence of the so-called ’energy efficiency gap’. One measure to support consumers’ decision-making towards the purchase of more efficient appliances is the display of...