Conference Agenda

Building energy efficiency has become a cornerstone of greenhouse gas mitigation strategies, with billions of dollars set aside for extensive upgrades in the coming years. However, impact evaluations have revealed actual energy savings from home upgrade programs often fall short of projections, in part due to contractor underperformance. Using field experiment results, we show refining one program design element—offering performance bonuses to contractors--increased natural gas savings by 24\% and generated \$5.39-\$14.53 in social benefits per dollar invested. Hence, changes to worker incentives can have sizable impacts on the cost effectiveness of GhG abatement in energy efficiency programs.

Why do profitable, socially beneficial technologies remain underadopted among firms in developing countries? I study this question through a randomized controlled trial with urban restaurants, a major consumer of biomass fuels. The experiment tested whether tailored, picture‑based information on environmental harms and private cost savings increases willingness to pay (WTP) for solar water heaters that replace charcoal‑fired boilers, eliciting WTP under upfront payment and under credit with monthly, weekly, and daily repayment schedules. Information had no effect: even with the most flexible repayment terms, average WTP was only 25 percent of market price. Detailed energy data show high private fuel expenditures and substantial pollution externalities; a social cost–benefit calculation implies that benefits exceed costs more than a hundred-fold, with private payback in under two years. Patterns in WTP across credit schedules indicate that liquidity constraints interact with behavioral frictions, rendering information and payment flexibility insufficient. The results reveal a large wedge between private and social returns and inform the design of Pigouvian subsidies and complementary financial instruments to induce socially efficient technology adoption.

Crop residue burning significantly contributes to air pollution in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Instead of burning, farmers can sell their crop residues in the biogas market—an underexplored avenue that could reduce crop residue burning while generating income. However, farmers need compression technology to manage and sell their residues, which most smallholder farmers cannot afford. Therefore, this study tests a novel market-based alternative to crop residue burning by connecting smallholder farmers to the biogas market for their crop residues. I involve 1,024 farmers in a field experiment with two arms: a control arm and a treatment arm. Using high-resolution satellite imagery, I find that the intervention reduces crop residue burning by 32%. The effects are concentrated among farmers who faced high financial constraints, but not among those who faced information constraints at baseline. Crop residue burning also decreases among neighbors, indicating that green technology generates significant spillover effects within villages. The results indicate that the intervention is a highly cost-effective policy for mitigating negative externalities in agriculture. The benefits, measured in terms of CO2 emissions averted, are approximately 54 times greater than the program cost.

Subsidizing fossil fuel consumption is both: at odds with climate change mitigation and a heavy burden on public budgets. Yet, efforts to reform such subsidies often face strong public opposition. We examine whether informing citizens about the effects of fossil fuel subsidy reform (FFSR) and complementary policy measures can increase public acceptance. We study this question using a novel survey experiment in Colombia, a country currently aiming at reforming existing fossil fuel subsidies. Building on Hoy et al. (2026), our experiment exposes respondents to different information treatments, including from an innovative calculation of personal costs, and options for complementary policy measures. Leveraging a representative sample with more than 3,600 respondents, we find that information provision alone has limited effects on public support, as citizens rarely update their at times incorrect beliefs. In contrast, policy design is crucial: Complementing FFSR with additional measures shifts public opinion from majority opposition to majority support. Informing about the environmental effects of FFSR is most effective and strongly increases support for environmentally oriented complementary policies. Opposition to FFSR without complementary measures remains primarily driven by concerns about impacts on poorer households. Our results inform about prospects for fossil fuel subsidy reform, when public opposition is of great concern.

Agriculture is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions but has largely remained outside stringent climate policies, often due to concerns about resistance from the sector. With Denmark introducing the world’s first CO2e (CO2-equivalent) tax on agricultural emissions, this paper provides representative evidence on farmers’ beliefs about its impacts and examines whether expert information can causally influence these beliefs and the acceptance of the tax. Using a randomized survey experiment with 981 Danish farmers, we find widespread overestimation of the tax’s impacts on production, employment, and land values, with 94-97% of farmers expecting impacts up to three times larger than expert estimates. Providing expert information reduces these perception gaps, through the effect varies with the tax’s stringency, the size of belief gaps, and farm characteristics, and can even sometimes trigger a backfire effect. We also find that the belief revisions can translate into acceptance of the tax, though this remains conditional on the same factors. Our findings underscore that designing acceptable climate policies for agriculture may require not only expert information but also targeted communication and complementary measures that account for farmers’ diverse characteristics and perceptions.

Regulating the electricity load of electric vehicle (EV) charging processes through direct

load control (DLC) can mitigate grid congestion caused by increased EV adoption and, in

turn, improve grid stability. We examine preferences for EV charging tariffs with DLC. We

conducted a highly individualized stated choice experiment with a representative sample of

the German population (n = 7,217). Our results show that respondents generally prefer a

conventional EV charging tariff without DLC features. Respondents also preferred tariffs

with higher remuneration, ex-ante information about upcoming charging interventions, and

the ability to opt out of interventions. Further analysis suggests strong heterogeneity in pref-

erences: future EV owners are more likely to adopt a DLC tariff and place less importance

on additional charging duration than non-owners do. Our findings reveal the importance of

balancing consumers’ perceived charging security and grid stability measures.