What Impedes Household Investment in Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy?

Nadia Ameli and Nicola Brandt ()

International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics, 2015, vol. 8, issue 1, 101-138

Abstract: Energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies provide important opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, households fail to take up many clean energy investments that are cost-effective. This article reviews different explanations for apparent underinvestment in energy efficiency that have been put forward in the literature. While investments in renewable energy technologies are typically not (yet) profitable, many of its drivers are similar to those that determine energy efficiency investments, and the two types of investment are therefore assessed jointly. The article also provides new evidence regarding barriers to investment in energy efficiency based on the OECD Survey on Household Environmental Behaviour and Attitudes. Finally, policy solutions that would help overcome some of these barriers are also presented.

Keywords: Energy efficiency gap; market failures; behavioural failures (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q38 Q41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/101.00000067 (application/xml)

Related works:
Working Paper: What Impedes Household Investment in Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy? (2015)
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:now:jirere:101.00000067

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics from now publishers
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lucy Wiseman ().