Conference Agenda

We evaluate the French CEE program, the largest energy efficiency obligation scheme in Europe. Using municipality-level panel data for 4,774 municipalities over the period 2018–2020, we first estimate its impact on energy use and carbon emissions. We find that official reporting on the program’s outcomes significantly overstates energy savings by at least 59\%. We then develop a novel methodology to estimate the average carbon abatement cost of the program, exploiting the fact that energy-saving certificates used for compliance are tradable. Our preferred estimate is a cost of \EUR{150} per ton of CO$_2$e. This cost falls to \EUR{52} per ton when accounting for the impact of program-induced increases in energy prices. The program therefore appears to be cost-effective.

Electric vehicles (EVs) eliminate tailpipe emissions, but their lower marginal costs may stimulate additional car travel and a shift away from active and public transport. We examine how EV adoption affects travel behavior using trip-level data and administrative microdata on households and passenger cars in the Netherlands. To mitigate endogeneity concerns, we employ a quasi-experimental design comparing trips of EV users with those of car users who adopted an EV relatively soon after the survey, i.e. not-yet-adopters. EV adoption substantially increases car kilometers, but the size of the effect varies across space and over time. Car use rises especially on weekends and among urban households. We find no evidence for reduced cycling, walking, or public transport use, although estimates for public transport are imprecise due to low baseline usage. The additional car use by EVs may amplify accident, infrastructure, and congestion costs, underscoring the need for targeted policy action.

Due to the abrupt shortage of gas imports from Russia during the energy crisis in the win-

ter of 2022/2023, European countries had to quickly substitute Russian gas with other energy

sources and had to drastically reduce their gas consumption levels in very short time. Conse-

quently, governments and energy providers launched a series of gas saving programs offering

economic incentives to stimulate savings by residential customers. This paper reports empir-

ical evidence from a gas saving program of one of the largest energy providers in Germany.

We combine survey data and a natural field experiment to investigate the effectiveness of the

program with a particular focus on heterogeneities in program adoption. We find significant

program-induced gas savings in a difference-in-differences framework. Participation is more

likely among higher-income and pro-socially motivated households, which tend to realize larger

absolute savings. These findings highlight the trade-off between program effectiveness and dis-

tributional considerations in the design of voluntary energy-saving programs.

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.