This paper evaluates an intervention that randomized information letters about energy efficient investments and behaviors among 120,000 customers of two utilities in Germany. We find that conservation effects differ considerably between both utilities, ranging from a precisely estimated zero...

Rebates that reward economic agents if they meet a minimum conservation threshold are a popular policy to encourage energy conservation. However, most threshold-based rebates are structured such that they do not encourage reduction beyond the threshold. In this paper, I show theoretically that...

During recent international climate negotiations like in Paris 2015, the European Union agreed to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. Policy-makers target the residential sector as a major user of fossil energy because potential to improve the energy efficiency in existing houses is...

Energy efficiency policies often involve low-interest loans for retrofit measures in private buildings; the main target of these loans are meant to be households with otherwise poor access to capital. However, such programs can only be successful if the targeted households also take up these...

This paper has two objectives. First it provides a correlation between internal and external barriers to energy efficiency and consumer behaviour related to two domains. It evaluates behaviour related to energy curtailment, which represents routine, repetitive effort to decrease consumption on a...

Implicit discount rates (IDRs) are employed in energy models to capture household investment decisions, yet the factors behind the IDR and their respective implications for policy-making usually remain blurred and fractional. The proposed comprehensive framework distinguishes three broad...

We study the effects of limited attention on property prices and energy efficiency (EE) investments in the housing market. Using a novel dataset, we analyse over 5 million residential property sale transactions in England and Wales, each containing information about sale price, property and...

In recent years, awareness about climate change and the need for cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has spread. Policymakers have hence chosen to promote the use of renewable energy, as well as encouraging improvements in energy efficiency (EE). This study analyzes the policy strategies of...