IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v38y2010i8p3865-3873.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Promoting energy efficiency investments with risk management decision tools

Author

Listed:
  • Jackson, Jerry

Abstract

This paper reviews current capital budgeting practices and their impact on energy efficiency investments. The prevalent use of short payback "rule-of-thumb" requirements to screen efficiency projects for risk is shown to bias investment choices towards "sure bet" investments bypassing many profitable efficiency investment options. A risk management investment strategy is presented as an alternative to risk avoidance practices applied with payback thresholds. The financial industry risk management tool Value-at-Risk is described and extended to provide an Energy-Budgets-at-Risk or EBaR risk management analysis to convey more accurate energy efficiency investment risk information. The paper concludes with recommendations to expand the use of Value-at-Risk-type energy efficiency analysis.

Suggested Citation

  • Jackson, Jerry, 2010. "Promoting energy efficiency investments with risk management decision tools," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(8), pages 3865-3873, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:38:y:2010:i:8:p:3865-3873
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301-4215(10)00169-2
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anderson, Soren T. & Newell, Richard G., 2004. "Information programs for technology adoption: the case of energy-efficiency audits," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 27-50, March.
    2. Anthony M. Marino & John G. Matsusaka, 2005. "Decision Processes, Agency Problems, and Information: An Economic Analysis of Capital Budgeting Procedures," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(1), pages 301-325.
    3. Schall, Lawrence D & Sundem, Gary L & Geijsbeek, William R, Jr, 1978. "Survey and Analysis of Capital Budgeting Methods," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 33(1), pages 281-287, March.
    4. Deng, S.J. & Oren, S.S., 2006. "Electricity derivatives and risk management," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 940-953.
    5. Ansar, Jasmin & Sparks, Roger, 2009. "The experience curve, option value, and the energy paradox," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 1012-1020, March.
    6. Mathew, Paul & Kromer, J. Stephen & Sezgen, Osman & Meyers, Steven, 2005. "Actuarial pricing of energy efficiency projects: lessons foul and fair," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(10), pages 1319-1328, July.
    7. Elazar Berkovitch, 2004. "Why the NPV Criterion does not Maximize NPV," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 17(1), pages 239-255.
    8. Graham, John R. & Harvey, Campbell R., 2001. "The theory and practice of corporate finance: evidence from the field," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2-3), pages 187-243, May.
    9. Mills, Evan & Kromer, Steve & Weiss, Gary & Mathew, Paul A., 2006. "From volatility to value: analysing and managing financial and performance risk in energy savings projects," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 188-199, January.
    10. Schleich, Joachim, 2009. "Barriers to energy efficiency: A comparison across the German commercial and services sector," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(7), pages 2150-2159, May.
    11. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    12. Harris, Jane & Anderson, Jane & Shafron, Walter, 2000. "Investment in energy efficiency: a survey of Australian firms," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 28(12), pages 867-876, October.
    13. Herbert A. Simon, 1955. "A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 69(1), pages 99-118.
    14. Sadeghi, Mehdi & Shavvalpour, Saeed, 2006. "Energy risk management and value at risk modeling," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(18), pages 3367-3373, December.
    15. Sanstad, Alan H. & Howarth, Richard B., 1994. "`Normal' markets, market imperfections and energy efficiency," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(10), pages 811-818, October.
    16. Harry Markowitz, 1952. "Portfolio Selection," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 7(1), pages 77-91, March.
    17. Daniel Kahneman & Jack L. Knetsch & Richard H. Thaler, 1991. "Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 193-206, Winter.
    18. Brown, Marilyn A. & Levine, Mark D. & Short, Walter & Koomey, Jonathan G., 2001. "Scenarios for a clean energy future," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(14), pages 1179-1196, November.
    19. Yard, Stefan, 2000. "Developments of the payback method," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 155-167, September.
    20. Mills, Evan, 2003. "Risk transfer via energy-savings insurance," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 273-281, February.
    21. Fama, Eugene F, 1996. "Discounting under Uncertainty," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 69(4), pages 415-428, October.
    22. Goldman, Charles A. & Hopper, Nicole C. & Osborn, Julie G., 2005. "Review of US ESCO industry market trends: an empirical analysis of project data," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 387-405, February.
    23. DeCanio, Stephen J., 1993. "Barriers within firms to energy-efficient investments," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 21(9), pages 906-914, September.
    24. H. Martin Weingartner, 1969. "Some New Views on the Payback Period and Capital Budgeting Decisions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 15(12), pages 594-607, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rockstuhl, Sebastian & Wenninger, Simon & Wiethe, Christian & Häckel, Björn, 2021. "Understanding the risk perception of energy efficiency investments: Investment perspective vs. energy bill perspective," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    2. Todd D. Gerarden & Richard G. Newell & Robert N. Stavins, 2017. "Assessing the Energy-Efficiency Gap," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1486-1525, December.
    3. F. Knobloch & J. -F. Mercure, 2016. "The behavioural aspect of green technology investments: a general positive model in the context of heterogeneous agents," Papers 1603.06888, arXiv.org.
    4. Ahlrichs, Jakob & Rockstuhl, Sebastian & Tränkler, Timm & Wenninger, Simon, 2020. "The impact of political instruments on building energy retrofits: A risk-integrated thermal Energy Hub approach," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    5. Häckel, Björn & Pfosser, Stefan & Tränkler, Timm, 2017. "Explaining the energy efficiency gap - Expected Utility Theory versus Cumulative Prospect Theory," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 414-426.
    6. Fleiter, Tobias & Schleich, Joachim & Ravivanpong, Ployplearn, 2012. "Adoption of energy-efficiency measures in SMEs—An empirical analysis based on energy audit data from Germany," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 863-875.
    7. Tobias Fleitera & Joachim Schleich & Ployplearn Ravivanpong, 2012. "Adoption of energy-efficiency measures in SMEs - An empirical analysis based on energy audit data," Post-Print hal-00805748, HAL.
    8. Töppel, Jannick & Tränkler, Timm, 2019. "Modeling energy efficiency insurances and energy performance contracts for a quantitative comparison of risk mitigation potential," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 842-859.
    9. Ahlrichs, Jakob & Rockstuhl, Sebastian, 2022. "Estimating fair rent increases after building retrofits: A max-min fairness approach," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    10. Apriani Soepardi & Pratikto Pratikto & Purnomo Budi Santoso & Ishardita Pambudi Tama & Patrik Thollander, 2018. "Linking of Barriers to Energy Efficiency Improvement in Indonesia’s Steel Industry," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-22, January.
    11. Ling Jia & Queena K. Qian & Frits Meijer & Henk Visscher, 2020. "Stakeholders’ Risk Perception: A Perspective for Proactive Risk Management in Residential Building Energy Retrofits in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-25, April.
    12. Felipe A. Csaszar & Daniel A. Levinthal, 2016. "Mental representation and the discovery of new strategies," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(10), pages 2031-2049, October.
    13. Yildiz, Özgür, 2014. "Lehren aus der Verhaltensökonomik für die Gestaltung umweltpolitischer Maßnahmen [Lessons from behavioral economics for the design of environmental policy measures]," MPRA Paper 59360, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Kalantzis, Fotios & Revoltella, Debora, 2019. "How energy audits promote SMEs' energy efficiency investment," EIB Working Papers 2019/02, European Investment Bank (EIB).
    15. Schunk, Daniel, 2009. "Behavioral heterogeneity in dynamic search situations: Theory and experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(9), pages 1719-1738, September.
    16. Wüstenhagen, Rolf & Menichetti, Emanuela, 2012. "Strategic choices for renewable energy investment: Conceptual framework and opportunities for further research," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 1-10.
    17. Pedro Linares & Xavier Labandeira, 2010. "Energy Efficiency: Economics And Policy," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(3), pages 573-592, July.
    18. Thierry Chauveau & Sylvain Friederich & Jérôme Héricourt & Emmanuel Jurczenko & Catherine Lubochinsky & Bertrand Maillet & Christophe Moussu & Bogdan Négréa & Hélène Raymond-Feingold, 2004. "La volatilité des marchés augmente-t-elle ?," Revue d'Économie Financière, Programme National Persée, vol. 74(1), pages 17-44.
    19. Malcolm Baker & Richard S. Ruback & Jeffrey Wurgler, 2004. "Behavioral Corporate Finance: A Survey," NBER Working Papers 10863, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Sandri, Serena & Schade, Christian & Mußhoff, Oliver & Odening, Martin, 2010. "Holding on for too long? An experimental study on inertia in entrepreneurs' and non-entrepreneurs' disinvestment choices," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 30-44, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:38:y:2010:i:8:p:3865-3873. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.