مفاهیم صرفه جویی در انرژی و بهره وری انرژی برای سیاستگذاری

Departing from the concept of rational use of energy, the paper outlines the microeconomics of end-use energy saving as a result of frugality or efficiency measures. Frugality refers to the behaviour that is aimed at energy conservation, and with efficiency we refer to the technical ratio between energy input and output services that can be modified with technical improvements (e.g. technology substitution). Changing behaviour from one side and technology from the other are key issues for public energy policy. In this paper, we attempt to identify the effects of parameters that determine energy saving behaviour with the use of the microeconomic theory. The role of these parameters is crucial and can determine the outcome of energy efficiency policies; therefore policymakers should properly address them when designing policies.

Energy efficiency is a term widely used, often with different meanings in public policy making. A clear distinction between energy efficiency and energy conservation is that the former refers to adoption of a specific technology that reduces overall energy consumption without changing the relevant behaviour, while the latter implies merely a change in consumers’ behaviour. In psychology, this has been labelled as efficiency and curtailment behaviour (Gardner and Stern, 2002). Many aspects and influencing parameters on the total outcome of an energy system, from the demand and the supply side, have to be taken into consideration, hence energy efficiency improvement estimation demands analytical processes. In this respect, economic literature has frequently taken as given the microeconomic parameters affecting energy efficiency and energy conservation (Howarth and Andersson, 1993; Sanstad and Howarth, 1994; IEA, 1997; Mintel International Group Ltd., 1997; Howarth et al., 2000; Clinch et al., 2000; Poortinga et al., 2003; Sorrell, 2004; Bor, 2008). Nevertheless, actual practice demonstrates that economic and technological assumptions (of perfect information and absence of transaction costs) on these parameters do not necessarily hold in the market, which shifts energy efficiency patterns (Jaffe and Stavins, 1994). Policymakers often decide on specific policies and instruments on the ground of standardized assumptions of energy use and energy saving behaviour of end-users. In many policy cases, energy efficiency improvement is set as an environmental target with strong assumptions on the rationality of end-users and their responsiveness to price signals, while such ex-ante assumptions should be verified with ex-post data, already appearing in the literature. Naturally, rationality of energy behaviour can be related to more parameters, as for instance effort, status, income, and many others. Energy efficiency policy instruments are mostly designed based on a normative perspective of market behaviour of economic actors, which are assumed to receive the market signals and act on the grounds of their own rationality. Still, the economic rationality in energy use and energy saving behaviours is an often entangled topic and depends on various parameters. The purpose of this paper is to identify the relationships between various economic variables that determine the behaviour towards energy efficiency. More specifically, departing from the microeconomic theory, we attempt to unveil some parameters that should be taken into account by social planners, when designing policies for energy efficiency improvement. The structure of this paper is as follows. In Section 2, we provide some basic definitions of somehow overlapping concepts of energy savings and energy efficiency. Section 3 refers to a microeconomic analysis of energy saving, rational use of energy, energy services, and the effects of time into energy savings. Furthermore, Section 4 deals solely with microeconomics of energy efficiency, incorporating concepts of rebound effects, real and shadow energy demand, the effects of time dimension in energy efficiency. Section 5 provides a discussion on energy saving and energy efficiency components as economic value reservoirs. Finally, in Section 6, we wrap up our theoretical analysis and come up with some recommendations for policy making.

Microeconomic analysis of private behaviour in relation to end-use energy demand and consumption gives rational foundations to the outline and implementation of public energy efficiency policy instruments. The present analysis suggests a theoretical framework in which private choices in energy conservation and energy efficiency are explained in terms of private preferences and costs: in this cadre they produce controversial effects, mainly for rebound phenomena. Still, the economic rationality in energy use and energy conservation is often debated and depends on various parameters. Initially, we differentiated between the concepts of energy efficiency and energy conservation, often used in parallel in literature. Energy savings addresses the reduction of final energy use, while energy efficiency concerns the technical ratio between the quantity of primary energy consumed and the maximum quantity of energy services obtainable. Policies can address each one or both aspects simultaneously. Departing from the microeconomic theory, we aim at understanding drivers for promoting energy saving beyond energy prices. To this end, we integrated some theories well established in environmental psychology in order to identify parameters that affect end-users behaviour for both energy efficiency and energy savings. From a rationalist information deficit model, for instance, we can extract that a parameterized energy use depends on awareness, trust, and commitment, moral obligation, cultural norms, routine practices, and habits, social networks and fashion. Some of these issues, like awareness and social behaviour, can be tackled with respective information diffusion policies, which target at these specific-market barriers. Other parameters explaining the energy users’ behaviour are found in the theory of planned behaviour i.e. people make planned, rational decisions and behavioural choices are motivated by self-interest, hassle, time and social approval and the theory value-belief-norm theory (i.e. general values of people determine environmentally oriented behaviour). To this end, policies that impose a cost (e.g. in the form of taxation) on individual energy behaviour do not lead to common action. Therefore, internalizing the common benefit by proper information in individual decisions concerning energy use can indeed lead to energy savings in the long-run. Alternative policies that can target at a certain extent this social dilemma could involve a form of market trading, where negotiations in the form of price arrangement for energy saving take place, as for instance in case of White Certificates or other market-based mechanisms. Moving a step further, we expressed with the private utility theory the relationship between the effort of energy savings and the results in terms of monetary savings in energy bills, or in other words, the opportunity cost of investing in energy saving and enjoying more comfort from energy consumption. Our main finding there, by incorporating the goal-framing theory is that people not only consider comfort and costs of energy savings, but also moral aspects such as environmental quality and future generations. Questionnaire study data has revealed that although higher income groups can consume more energy and theoretically can afford to invest more in energy efficiency, there is a direct association between intention to conserve energy and psychological factors, whereas socio-demographic characteristics do hardly come into play. To this end, higher levels of perceived behavioural control and positive attitudes towards energy conservation can drive towards greater energy savings. Behavioural control and attitude change can also be triggered by policies of self-monitoring, such as introduction of smart metering in the market. A third aspect we explored is the rebound effect, which is a typical income effect and originates from the increased energy efficiency that allows a double dividend for the end-user: less effort in energy saving and, simultaneously, less money spent on energy bills and more space for increased energy use in the future. The trade-off between effort and energy bill saving, when an increase in efficiency is present at-work, will depend on the overall perception towards energy saving: consumers who attribute a very high disutility to the effort will reduce it sensitively, and vice versa, consumers with a marginal utility of income relatively high with respect to the effort, will choose to limit their bills further. Energy policy on efficiency should be integrated with financial or market-based policies, which can minimize the rebound effect by setting private costs of using energy closer to the social costs, hence reducing the externalities. Finally, we consider that this analysis can provide a useful insight for policymakers when designing policies for energy efficiency improvement, since departing from the normative aspects of end-users rational behaviour, more parameters have to be taken into account that generate a differentiated behaviour. More specifically, some key policy lessons summarized from this study are: (a) policies can be ‘smart’ targeting at both use and investments, (b) taxing individuals is not enough for long-run energy saving, as information campaigns and market instruments are necessary to induce collective behaviour, (c) policies stressing the moral obligation to conserve energy can increase their acceptability, (d) financial compensation for savings must take place in the short-run in order to enable end-users to monitor their daily energy use, (e) behavioural change can be triggered in the medium-run by self-monitoring policies, which can modify the end usage, and (f) enabling financing options through policy schemes can overcome substantial market barriers of consumers towards energy efficiency investments.