Conference Agenda

Addressing renewable energy intermittency while meeting net zero emissions targets requires greater flexibility in electricity demand. We study demand-side flexibility through a randomized control trial in which urban Indian households are provided with Wi-Fi-enabled smart switches to control appliances. Automated switch-off events reward participants for reducing electricity consumption during critical periods. Using high-frequency household- and device-level data, we find that automated switch-offs substantially reduce electricity use during events, particularly during peak demand hours. We find no evidence of leakage across appliances or load shifting to other times, indicating reductions in total consumption. Combining consumption responses with marginal emissions and generation cost data suggests that optimally timed automation can deliver meaningful emissions reductions at low or potentially negative cost.

Reducing household electricity consumption to lower CO_2 emissions has become an urgent priority as global warming intensifies. We conducted an electricity conservation experiment at a Chinese university involving 179 dormitories, divided into three groups: a self-set private goal treatment, a self-set public goal treatment, and a control group.

During the four-week intervention period, the private goal treatment led to a 13.24% significant reduction in electricity consumption than the control group. In contrast, the public goal treatment did not yield a statistically significant effect. The conservation effect in the private goal group did not persist after the intervention ended.

Heterogeneity analysis showed that the private goal treatment had a stronger impact in male dormitories, while no significant gender differences were observed in the public goal group. Goal achievement emerged as a key factor in sustaining energy savings: dormitories that achieved their goals reduced electricity use by 19.72% in the private goal group and 32.38% in the public goal group after the intervention. Moreover, dormitories that set high-level goals saved more electricity than those with medium or low-level goals in both treatment groups.

We develop and test a conceptual framework on the real effects of disclosing polarizing information using data from a natural field experiment with a courier service provider offering business-to-business and business-to-consumer shipments. In the experiment, senders could pay an additional fee to offset the CO2 emissions from each delivery, with treatments varying whether this decision was disclosed to the recipient. Under mandatory disclosure, offsetting behavior depends on both the senders’ preferences and their perceptions of the receiver’s preferences. In our experiment, this leads to lower offsetting levels, particularly among senders who already demonstrated pro-environmental preferences (senders whose websites feature ESG-related content). We also find fewer repeat deliveries among sender-receiver pairs in the mandatory disclosure condition. From a policy perspective, these findings reveal an unintended consequence of disclosing polarizing information- such transparency may backfire, resulting in fewer carbon-neutral shipments.

To ensure a primarily renewable energy supply, solutions must be found to

avoid temporal discrepancies between electricity demand and the availability of

power generated by wind and solar. One possibility to do so is by increased involvement

of consumers in the management of electricity provision. Through the

formation of energy communities that seek to be largely self-sufficient with their

own renewable generation enthusiasm for demand flexibility could be boosted

and fresh incentives could be generated.

To test this hypothesis, we conducted an experiment with 6, 775 participants within

a large household survey in nine European countries. We randomly split the participants

into two equally sized groups. Both groups were asked whether they

wanted to shift their electricity demand for environmental reasons and whether

they would accept a time-of-use tariff that adjusts electricity prices over time to

provide a monetary incentive for demand flexibility. For the first group, the decision

setting was framed as an offer from their current energy supplier; for the

second group, it was framed as an opportunity to participate in a self-sufficient

energy community.

Our results show a certain willingness of consumers to adopt load-shifting behaviors

and e.g. use an app that notifies them about opportune times to save energy

and, by that, CO2 emissions. We cannot find a positive effect of energy community

membership here. When bringing in the financial aspect and trying to elicit people’s

willingness to either switch to a time-of-use pricing tariff provided by their

current provider respectively joining a largely self-sustained energy community,

we can observe that while people are open to switch to a flexible pricing scheme

in the first setting, this share is significantly lower under the energy community

frame.