This paper investigates the relationships between energy consumption and economic growth in Switzerland over the period 1950-2010. We apply bounds testing techniques to different energy types separately. Robustness tests are performed by including additional variables and restricting the analysis to the period after 1970. The results show that there exist robust long run relationships going from real GDP towards heating oil and electricity consumption. The relationship between heating oil and GDP is in fact bidirectional, although weaker from heating oil towards GDP than in the reverse direction. When investigating the period 1970-2010 only, the estimate of the long run income elasticity of electricity consumption loses statistical significance and that for heating oil becomes negative. Those results imply a possible decoupling between GDP growth and energy consumption, so that energy conservation policies are not necessarily expected to have a negative impact on Swiss economic growth.

This paper investigates the relationships between energy consumption and economic growth in Switzerland over the period 1950-2010. We apply bounds testing techniques to different energy types separately. Robustness tests are performed by including additional variables and restricting the analysis to the period after 1970. The results show that there exist robust long run relationships going from real GDP towards heating oil and electricity consumption. The relationship between heating oil and GDP is in fact bidirectional, although weaker from heating oil towards GDP than in the reverse direction. When investigating the period 1970-2010 only, the estimate of the long run income elasticity of electricity consumption loses statistical significance and that for heating oil becomes negative. Those results imply a possible decoupling between GDP growth and energy consumption, so that energy conservation policies are not necessarily expected to have a negative impact on Swiss economic growth.

Deep energy retrofit (DER) of the existing building stock is a meaningful strategy to reduce fossil fuel consumption and CO 2 emissions. However, the investment volumes required to undertake DER are enormous. In Europe, cumulative demand for DER is estimated at close to 1000 billion EUR until 2050. Public expenditures and political measures can help to stimulate and guide DER, but substantial private investments are required to achieve significant results. In this paper, we analyze the economic and financial implications for renovating an office building to the BPassive House^standard. This is achieved by applying a dynamic Life Cycle Cost & Benefit Analysis (LCCBA) to model the cash flows (CF). The model also includes an appraisal of debt and equity financing implications, and a multi-parameter sensitivity analysis to analyze impacts of input parameter deviations. In the second part of the paper, we use the Bmultiple project benefits^(MPB) concept to identify project-based cobenefits of DER (with a focus on productivity), to make Energy Efficiency (2019) 12:261-279 https://doi.the business case more attractive. Results show that the DER project cash flow over a 25-year period achieves a 21-year dynamic payback with an IRR of below 2%. Levelized Cost of Heat Savings is 100 EUR/MWh with a 70% capital expenditure and 15% interest cost share. The Loan Life Cover Ratio comes out to 1.2. To make the business case more attractive, pecuniary MPBs identified are increased rents, real estate values, (employee) productivity, maintenance costs, and CO 2 savings, in addition to societal benefits. Compared to simpler economic modeling, the dynamic LCCBA cash flow model provides solid grounds not only for DER business case analysis, project structuring, and financial engineering, but also for policy design. CFs from future energy cost savings alone are often insufficient in convincing investors. However, they can co-finance DER investments substantially. Consideration of project level MPBs can offer meaningful monetary contributions, and also help to identify strategic allies for project implementation; however, the Bsplit incentive^dilemma requires differentiation between tenants and different types of investors. Furthermore, the approach supports policy-makers to develop policy measures needed to achieve 2050 goals.

Inadequate information is often identified as a potential cause for the so-called “energy efficiency gap,” i.e., the sluggish pace of investment in energy efficiency technologies, which potentially affects a wide variety of energy-using goods, including road vehicles. To improve the fuel economy of vehicles, in 2003 Switzerland introduced a system of fuel economy and CO2 emissions labels for new passenger cars, based on grades from A (best) to G (worst). We have data for all cars approved for sale in Switzerland from 2000 to 2011. Hedonic regressions suggest that there is a fuel-economy premium, but do not allow us to identify whether the fuel economy label has an additional effect on car price, above and beyond the effect of fuel economy. To circumvent this problem, we turn to a sharp regression discontinuity design based on the mechanism used by the government to assign cars to the fuel economy label, which estimates the effect of the A label on price to be 6-11%. Matching estimators find this effect to be 5%.