Conference Agenda

We leverage the substantial and unforeseen increase in energy prices resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine to estimate the efficacy and distributional consequences of an energy tax on the residential consumption of gas in the Netherlands. We harness quasi-random variation in the remaining duration of fixed-price contracts to estimate the differences in the amounts of gas consumed by those households whose fixed-price contracts expired during the period of significant price escalation, particularly from January to June 2023, to that of the households whose contract expiration dates extended beyond October 2023. Whereas the latter households continued to pay their pre-escalation gas prices, the former were confronted with price jumps of between roughly 60 and 350%. We estimate the overall impact on residential gas consumption, and we also explore whether the price elasticity of demand is income-dependent. Combined, this approach enables us to shed light on the potential impact and distributional consequences of energy taxation.

Energy Efficiency Obligations (EEOs) are widespread instruments to attain energy efficiency goals. They have been adopted by 16 EU Member States, as well as in the US, the UK, and in China. EEOs require energy suppliers to grant energy efficiency investment subsidies to households. Using a new dataset gathering more than 2.7 million energy retrofit works over 2017-2019, we assess the impact of the French EEOs - the biggest in Europe - on household electricity and gas consumption. We find that EEOs-funded works are plagued by a minimum 46% energy performance gap. The implied marginal abatement cost is higher than EUR 260/t. CO2-eq., way above ex-ante projections.

In March 2020, Luxembourg became the first country in the world to offer free public transport across all modes of transport. We leverage this unique quasi-experimental setting to evaluate whether Luxembourg's free public transport policy has induced a shift from private motorized transport to free public transport. To assess this shift we measure the reduction in carbon emissions from road transport as an indicator of reduced dependence on private motorized vehicles. We use spatial panel data from the European Emission Database on Global Atmospheric Research and utilize the recently proposed Synthetic Difference-in-Differences method that combines the advantages of the canonical Difference-in-Difference and Synthetic Control approaches. The study estimates a 6.5\% reduction in road transport emissions as a result of the policy, indicating a significant modal shift from private vehicles to public transport. We carefully consider Luxembourg's distinctive characteristics and account for the concurrent COVID-19 pandemic to address potential challenges associated with identification and control measures. In particular, we control for confounding factors such as the COVID-related restrictions, the carbon taxation policies, and changes in working-from-home. Event study analyses and robustness checks indicate the overall reliability of our results.

Electrification of the private passenger transport sector is a fundamental milestone in reducing global carbon emissions. To reach this goal, several governments introduced a series of incentive programs to encourage the adoption of battery-electric vehicles (BEVs). Two of the most widespread policies to incentivize the adoption of BEVs are discounts on the annual vehicle circulation tax and purchase rebates. This paper analyzes the causal relationship between introducing these two policies and adopting battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) in Switzerland. We also examine the effect of the diffusion of rooftop solar PV on the adoption of BEVs. We find that purchase rebates for BEVs positively affect their adoption, while the discount on the circulation tax has a minor or no effect. However, the cost-effectiveness of both policies remains low because of a free-riding problem, i.e. all buyers of a BEV are entitled to the incentives, including those who would have bought a car even in their absence. The diffusion of solar PV facilitates the adoption of BEVs.