Critical peak rebates for residential gas: Effectiveness and selection during the European Energy Crisis

Martin Kesternich, Vicky Leoni Tinnefeld and Madeline Werthschulte

No 26-036, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: The abrupt shortage of natural gas imports during the 2022/2023 energy crisis following Russia's war against Ukraine forced European countries to rapidly cut consumption. In response, governments and energy providers introduced voluntary gas-saving programs offering financial incentives to residential customers. We study one such program - a critical peak rebate (CPR) launched by one of Germany's largest energy providers - that offered a six-month per-unit bonus for demand reductions at a time when wholesale gas prices spiked but regulated retail prices remained fixed, muting the price signal households actually faced. Combining household meter readings with survey data, we use a difference-in-differences design to "stress test" a CPR scheme. We show that the program-induced average gas savings amount to 13.2 to 17 percent. Participation was more likely among higher consumption, higher income and pro-socially motivated households, who also achieved larger absolute savings. This reveals a trade-off between program effectiveness and distributional considerations in the design of demand flexibility programs.

Keywords: Critical peak rebates; residential energy savings; energy crises; program enrollment; difference-in-differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 D12 D91 Q41 Q48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/343563/1/1982971401.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:zbw:zewdip:343563

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().