Conference Agenda

This paper examines the causal effect of South Korea’s Zero Energy Building (ZEB) mandate on electricity use in newly constructed public buildings. Exploiting the regulatory threshold at 1,000 m², we implement a fuzzy regression discontinuity (FRD) design with two-stage least squares, combining monthly building-level electricity records from the National Building Energy Database with ZEB certification data and local weather covariates. Estimation uses local-linear regressions with triangular kernels, optimal/bias-corrected bandwidths, and region–year–weather controls. Across the five mandated building types, the FRD estimates indicate a clear reduction in site electricity intensity at the 1,000 m² threshold. The largest savings are observed in cultural and sports facilities, while office buildings also show substantial and precisely estimated reductions alongside strong compliance at the cutoff. Education and research buildings exhibit smaller reductions and weaker compliance, suggesting the need for weak-instrument-robust inference. Facilities serving older persons and children show more modest but precisely estimated savings. Policy implications are twofold. First, the ZEB mandate is effective on average but heterogeneous; targeted enforcement and commissioning support in HVAC-intensive types can amplify savings, while plug-load management and demand response are natural complements in offices/labs. Second, because electrification may raise site electricity while lowering total energy/emissions, future evaluations should track source energy and CO2 in addition to electricity.