Energy Burden Alleviation and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction: Can We Reach Two Objectives With One Policy?

Dorothée Charlier (), Anna Risch and Claire Salmon

Ecological Economics, 2018, vol. 143, issue C, 294-313

Abstract: In this article, we assess French current public policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and abate household energy burden, through a simulation of changes in residential sector characteristics over the long run. We build on an existing partial equilibrium model to take into consideration key determinants of excessive energy burden among vulnerable households. This analysis reveals that current public policies are not sufficient to reach the ambitious objectives for reducing energy consumption and GHG emissions in France. Moreover, the decreases that might occur mask significant social disparities across households. The joint implementation of multiple instruments leads to interactions that diminish overall policy outcomes. Overall, current public policies produce estimated free-riding rates of 75%. Energy efficiency measures are thus insufficient in themselves; the government should focus more on monetary poverty as a cause of low home improvement rates and consider subsidizing renovation costs as a potential solution.

Keywords: Energy burden; Public policies; Bottom-up simulation; Energy consumption; GHG emissions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 C61 Q41 Q48 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800915305498
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Energy burden alleviation and greenhouse gas emissions reduction: Can we reach two objectives with one policy ? (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:143:y:2018:i:c:p:294-313

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.07.002

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().