Conference Agenda

The post-2022 energy crisis provides a natural setting to examine whether large demand shocks can generate persistent changes in household energy-use practices. In France, the crisis combined sharp price increases with intense public communication around shortage risks and explicit calls for energy sufficiency. This paper investigates whether the post-2022 decline in residential gas consumption is persistent, widespread, and potentially compatible with sufficiency-type behavior.We use an administrative dataset published by SDES and collected from gas distribution operators (notably GRDF), providing annual residential gas consumption at the IRIS level over 2018–2024. After constructing a balanced panel of approximately 10,870 IRIS correcting consumption for weather fluctuations, we estimate a fixed-effects demand model and build a counterfactual path based on pre-crisis price elasticity. The residual gap between observed and counterfactual consumption is interpreted as a non-price adjustment potentially reflecting persistent behavioral change. We document a significant and persistent post-crisis decline, with the largest reduction in 2023 and continued persistence in 2024. The decline is broadly diffused across territories, yet slighly heterogeneous: larger dwellings exhibit stronger reductions, while homeownership effects weaken once socio-residential controls are introduced. Finally, energy poverty and vulnerability indicators suggest that part of the decline may reflect constrained adjustments rather than voluntary sufficiency, highlighting the importance of integrating distributional considerations into demand-side policies.