Are energy efficiency policies for household context dependent? A comparative study of Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Uruguay

Abstract

In the last decades, the relevance of household energy-efficiency measures has increased, not only as mitigation policy, but also as key energy policies that may improve socioeconomic development. Despite their cost-effectivity, some of the most important household energy efficiency measures are often not implemented. There are different barriers that energy policy has to overcome to support their delivery. Nonetheless, specific situations may result in a bad performance of energy efficiency policies. It is crucial to understand which are the main characteristics, or enabling conditions, that affect the policy in order to consider them in the process of policy design.In this context, the aim of the paper is to contribute to the literature on energy efficiency in the household sector, by discussing the relevance of enabling conditions for the performance of the policies, and proposing a methodology framework to analyze these enabling frameworks. An approach to transform qualitative information into quantitative data also represents a contribution to the literature. The methodology consists of an adaptation of the broadly used multicriteria analysis (MCA). As an initial empirical study, a set of Latin American countries have been chosen, namely Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Uruguay, to study these conditions in 2016.Findings show that Uruguay and Chile have the best boundary conditions to promote energy efficiency, followed by Brazil and Colombia which has presented difficulties in different boundary conditions. Results also highlight that the implementation of household energy efficiency policies is highly dependent on country context. In order to develop an enabling framework, it is relevant to count with a strong commitment, awareness raising, as well as price policies, financing access and favorable macroeconomic conditions.