Effects of energy performance certificates on investment : A quasi-natural experiment approach

• Incomplete information may be one reason why some households do not invest in energy efficiency even though it would benefit them to do so. Energy performance certificates (EPCs) have been promoted to overcome such information shortages. In this paper, we investigate whether EPCs together with mandatory home energy audits make households more likely to invest in energy efficiency. Our study takes advantage of the mandatory nature of the EPCs to avoid the potential selection bias problem that typically applies to studies using voluntary energy audits as the treatment. Our treatment group consists of single-household houses in Sweden sold from 2008, i.e., when EPCs became legally required in connection with sales of residential buildings, to 2015; while the control group consists of houses sold between 2002 and 2008, i.e., without an EPC. The results show that there is no statistically significant treatment effect for most of the measures that a household can take to improve the energy performance of their house. The significant treatment effect that we do find concerns a few heating system-related measures.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Nationalekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Economics (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Naturresursteknik -- Energisystem (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Environmental Engineering -- Energy Systems (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

energy performance certificate

energy audits

quasi-natural experiment

incomplete information

investment decision

energy efficiency gap

policy evaluation

nationalekonomi

Economics

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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