Interactions of White Certificates for energy efficiency and other energy and climate policy instruments

Vlasios Oikonomou
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Promotiedatum: 27 mei 2010
Promotor: prof. dr. C.J. Jepma
Copromotor: dr. M.K. Patel
ISBN: 978-90-367-4281-8

Samenvatting

The EU and its member states are developing their ow policies targeting at energy supply, energy demand an environmental goals that are indirectly linked to ener use. As these policies are implemented in an alread policy crowded environment, interactions of these i struments take place, which can be complements competitive or self exclusive. As a starting point, we tes White Certificates for energy efficiency improvement i the end-use sectors.
Our main research questions are: i) to provide a genereral explanatory framework for analyzing energy and climat policy interactions by employing suitable methods, an ii) to evaluate these methods and draw conclusions fo policy makers when introducing White Certificates wit other policy instruments stressing the critical condition that affect their performance.
A core lesson is that when evaluating ex-ante instru ments, a variety of economic and technological method must be applied. Based on these methods, several endo enous and exogenous conditions affect the performanc of White Certificates schemes with other policy instru ments. Due to the innovative character of White Ce tificates and the uncertainty of hidden costs embedde into it, ex-ante evaluations should focus not only on th effectiveness and efficiency of the scheme, but on sever. other criteria which express the political acceptabilit and socioeconomic effects. We argue finally that Whit Certificates can make effective use of market forces an can assist in overcoming market barriers towards ener efficiency, and we expect that under certain precondi Lions, it can be integrated with other policy instrument and allows to achieve cost effectively multiple enviro mental objectives.