IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/esr/wpaper/wp388.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Greener Homes: An Ex-Post Estimate of the Cost of Carbon Dioxide Emission Reduction using Administrative Micro-Data from the Republic of Ireland

Author

Listed:
  • Leahy, Eimear
  • Tol, Richard S. J.

Abstract

We assess the subsidy for the installation of biomass boilers and wood gasification boilers under the Greener Homes Scheme in Ireland. We find that the (implicit) subsidy per tonne of carbon dioxide avoided varies hugely across households. The current policy costs 17% too much for the emissions avoided, or avoids 17% too few emissions for the money spent. The subsidy reduces welfare (including environmental benefits) by 42%.

Suggested Citation

  • Leahy, Eimear & Tol, Richard S. J., 2011. "Greener Homes: An Ex-Post Estimate of the Cost of Carbon Dioxide Emission Reduction using Administrative Micro-Data from the Republic of Ireland," Papers WP388, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    • Handle: RePEc:esr:wpaper:wp388
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.esri.ie/pubs/WP388.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Leahy, Eimear & Lyons, Sean, 2010. "Energy use and appliance ownership in Ireland," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(8), pages 4265-4279, August.
    2. Scott, S., 1997. "Household energy efficiency in Ireland: A replication study of ownership of energy saving items," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 187-208, May.
    3. FitzGerald, John & Bergin, Adele & Conefrey, Thomas & Diffney, Sean & Duffy, David & Kearney, Ide & Lyons, Sean & Malaguzzi Valeri, Laura & Mayor, Karen & Richard S. J. Tol, 2008. "Medium-Term Review 2008-2015, No. 11," Forecasting Report, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number MTR11, June.
    4. Clinch, J. Peter & Healy, John D., 2001. "Cost-benefit analysis of domestic energy efficiency," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 113-124, January.
    5. O'Doherty, Joe & Lyons, Sean & Tol, Richard S.J., 2008. "Energy-using appliances and energy-saving features: Determinants of ownership in Ireland," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 85(7), pages 650-662, July.
    6. Metcalf, Gilbert E., 2009. "Tax Policies for Low-Carbon Technologies," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 62(3), pages 519-533, September.
    7. Amstalden, Roger W. & Kost, Michael & Nathani, Carsten & Imboden, Dieter M., 2007. "Economic potential of energy-efficient retrofitting in the Swiss residential building sector: The effects of policy instruments and energy price expectations," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 1819-1829, March.
    8. Babiker, Mustafa H. & Metcalf, Gilbert E. & Reilly, John, 2003. "Tax distortions and global climate policy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 269-287, September.
    9. Jenkins, D.P., 2010. "The value of retrofitting carbon-saving measures into fuel poor social housing," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 832-839, February.
    10. Baumol, William J, 1972. "On Taxation and the Control of Externalities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(3), pages 307-322, June.
    11. Wasi, Nada & Carson, Richard T., 2013. "The influence of rebate programs on the demand for water heaters: The case of New South Wales," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 645-656.
    12. Richard S. J. Tol, 2009. "The Economic Effects of Climate Change," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 23(2), pages 29-51, Spring.
    13. Mills, Bradford F. & Schleich, Joachim, 2009. "Profits or preferences? Assessing the adoption of residential solar thermal technologies," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(10), pages 4145-4154, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. CBA of the Home Energy Saving scheme
      by Richard Tol in The Irish Economy on 2011-09-25 01:34:43

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Richard S. J. Tol, 2021. "Europe’s Climate Target for 2050: An Assessment," Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics;Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), vol. 56(6), pages 330-335, November.
    2. Richard S.J. Tol, 2018. "Energy and Climate," Working Paper Series 1618, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    3. Tol, Richard S.J., 2013. "Targets for global climate policy: An overview," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 911-928.
    4. Tol, Richard S.J., 2017. "The structure of the climate debate," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 431-438.

    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. Henningsen, Geraldine & Wiese, Catharina, 2019. "Do Household Characteristics Really Matter? A Meta-Analysis on the Determinants of Households’ Energy-Efficiency Investments," MPRA Paper 101701, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Petrov, Ivan & Ryan, Lisa, 2021. "The landlord-tenant problem and energy efficiency in the residential rental market," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    3. Mills, Bradford & Schleich, Joachim, 2014. "Household transitions to energy efficient lighting," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 151-160.
    4. Thomas Conefrey & John D. Fitz Gerald & Laura Malaguzzi Valeri & Richard S.J. Tol, 2013. "The impact of a carbon tax on economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions in Ireland," Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(7), pages 934-952, September.
    5. Marco Rogna, 2020. "Microeconomic models of a production economy with environmental externalities," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 2625-2650, March.
    6. Matthew Collins & John Curtis, 2017. "Value for money in energy efficiency retrofits in Ireland: grant provider and grant recipients," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(51), pages 5245-5267, November.
    7. Tol, Richard S.J., 2012. "A cost–benefit analysis of the EU 20/20/2020 package," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 288-295.
    8. Hui Yun Rebecca Neo & Nyuk Hien Wong & Marcel Ignatius & Chao Yuan & Yong Xu & Kai Cao, 2023. "Spatial analysis of public residential housing's electricity consumption in relation to urban landscape and building characteristics: A case study in Singapore," Energy & Environment, , vol. 34(2), pages 233-254, March.
    9. Sekitou, Mai & Tanaka, Kenta & Managi, Shunsuke, 2018. "Household electricity demand after the introduction of solar photovoltaic systems," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 102-110.
    10. Freyre, Alisa & Klinke, Sandra & Patel, Martin K., 2020. "Carbon tax and energy programs for buildings: Rivals or allies?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    11. Grottera, Carolina & Barbier, Carine & Sanches-Pereira, Alessandro & Abreu, Mariana Weiss de & Uchôa, Christiane & Tudeschini, Luís Gustavo & Cayla, Jean-Michel & Nadaud, Franck & Pereira Jr, Amaro Ol, 2018. "Linking electricity consumption of home appliances and standard of living: A comparison between Brazilian and French households," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 877-888.
    12. Dineen, D. & Rogan, F. & Ó Gallachóir, B.P., 2015. "Improved modelling of thermal energy savings potential in the existing residential stock using a newly available data source," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 90(P1), pages 759-767.
    13. Jacksohn, Anke & Grösche, Peter & Rehdanz, Katrin & Schröder, Carsten, 2019. "Drivers of renewable technology adoption in the household sector," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 216-226.
    14. Havas, Lisa & Ballweg, Julie & Penna, Chris & Race, Digby, 2015. "Power to change: Analysis of household participation in a renewable energy and energy efficiency programme in Central Australia," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 325-333.
    15. Shigeru Matsumoto, 2016. "Household Income Structure and Electrical Appliance Ownership: Evidence from Japanese National Household Survey," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 6(1), pages 14-19.
    16. Tilov, Ivan & Farsi, Mehdi & Volland, Benjamin, 2020. "From frugal Jane to wasteful John: A quantile regression analysis of Swiss households’ electricity demand," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    17. Jiaxing Wang & Makoto Sugino & Shigeru Matsumoto, 2019. "Determinants of household energy efficiency investment: analysis of refrigerator purchasing behavior," International Journal of Economic Policy Studies, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 389-402, August.
    18. Legge, Thomas & Scott, Susan, 2009. "Policy Options to Reduce Ireland's GHG Emissions [Instrument choice: the pros and cons of alternative policy instruments]," Papers WP284, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    19. Schleich, Joachim & Gassmann, Xavier & Faure, Corinne & Meissner, Thomas, 2016. "Making the implicit explicit: A look inside the implicit discount rate," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 321-331.
    20. Corrado Di Maria & Susana Ferreira & Emiliya Lazarova, 2010. "Shedding Light On The Light Bulb Puzzle: The Role Of Attitudes And Perceptions In The Adoption Of Energy Efficient Light Bulbs," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 57(1), pages 48-67, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    cost/Ireland/Policy/Republic of Ireland;

    JEL classification:

    • Q48 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Government Policy
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:esr:wpaper:wp388. 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: Sarah Burns (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/esriiie.html .

    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.