The Elusive Effects of Residential Energy Efficiency Improvements: Evidence from Ukraine

Abstract

Untapped improvements in energy efficiency in the residential sector may deliver large savings in energy use and the CO2 associated emissions. Yet empirical assessments have been difficult and controversial. We collect monthly natural gas meter readings from a sample of homes in Transcarpathia, in Western Ukraine, an early adopter of the country's trend away from district heating, from January 2013 to April 2017, a period over which the residential natural gas tariffs rose by over 700%. We combine the monthly meter readings with documentation about each household's heating-related energy efficiency upgrades to the home (wall, attic or basement insulation; new windows; boiler replacement, and insulation around pipes) to form a panel dataset. We estimate the effect of the energy efficiency renovations on natural gas consumption, controlling for weather, income and government energy assistance. The decision to do the renovations and natural gas consumption are likely endogenous (people do the renovations because they hope to consume less), so we instrument for the renovations by creating a cross-validation instrument based on a supply-side argument. Even for a given type of energy efficiency upgrades, the estimated effect of the renovations varies dramatically in magnitude, depending on whether the renovations are instrumented for and on how detailed the fixed effects are. The coefficients on the renovations are almost always negative in our regressions, but practically and statistically significant only when we instrument for the renovations. This is in agreement with our respondents' difficulty assessing whether the renovations had saved them gas or money. The IV estimates indicate that insulation delivers 13-24% reductions in natural gas usage, and up to a 5% internal rate of return (IRR) to the investment over 20 years. Judicious use of an existing government program can yield positive IRRs and make energy efficiency upgrades a good investment in a generally poor-performing housing market.

Financial crime spillovers. Does one gain to be avenged?

“…And 3) The free market provides the easiest access to capital markets through a direct quotation procedure for any company, whatever the size (from micro-cap to medium-sized international companies) searching to access capital markets (free from the Euronext's eligibility criteria and information disclosure requirements). This market targets primarily sophisticated or professional investors; 6 Euronext classifies firms into the 10 following sectors: basic materials; consumer goods; consumer services; financials; health care; industrials; oil & gas; technology; telecoms; utilities; 7 This dummy variable equals to 1 when the firm was more than one time named in sanction reports as victim of market manipulators; 8 This dummy variable equals to 1 when the firm was both a market manipulator and a victim for different sanction procedures; 9 This dummy variable equals to 1 when several victims were named in a given sanction report; 10 This table reports the cumulative abnormal returns (CAR ) from one day preceding the event to one day following the event (t = 0 for the Enforcement Committee and the sanction decision) and their significance levels at 5% and 10%. The abnormal returns (AR ) are computed given the augmented market model parameters, which are estimated with OLS with White-corrected standard errors over the period [-120;-11] This table reports the cumulative average abnormal returns (CAAR ) from the day preceding the event up to a specified day t in event time for the last two main steps of the sanction procedure.…”

“…1) Warning or blame, depending on the seriousness of the wrongdoing(s); and 2) "ban on activity", covering temporary or permanent ban on providing some or all services, suspension or withdrawal of professional license, and temporary or permanent ban on conducting some or all businesses. the EC AMF and most frequently published (possibly at least partially anonymized) by the AMF, 9 the market manipulator (firm and/or individual) and/or the AMF Chairman of the Board can appeal the decision towards four different jurisdictions: State Council, Court of Appeal of Paris, Court of Cassation, and via priority preliminary ruling on constitutionality. Sanctions were frequently appealed over the period under review (45%), with a limited success (79% of the appeals were rejected to date).…”

Residential energy efficiency interventions: A meta‐analysis of effectiveness studies

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“…in combination with the World Bank (Costolanski et al, 2013). In three other studies the interventions were funded through a combination of private and government funding (Alberini et al, 2016(Alberini et al, , 2019Hamilton et al, 2016). For example, in Alberini 4) and some were subsidised.…”

Parental leave length and mothers’ careers: what can be inferred from occupational allocation?

“…8 Robustness check using data prior to 2012 and direct definition of parental leave provide almost identical results as the analysis using the adapted definition of childcare leave. 9 In 2011 there was a significant change in the system of occupational classification used in the Czech Labor Force Survey. Prior to this year information on occupations was recorded using a Czech system of occupational classification, KZAM, while in 2011 the Czech Statistical Office officially started to code occupations according to ISCO.…”