Energy efficient technology adoption and low-income households in the EU - what is the evidence?

This paper studies the adoption of high-cost, medium-cost, and low-cost ener-gy-efficient technologies (EETs) by income categories across eight European Union countries. The statistical-econometric analyses allow the effects of in-come to differ by income quartiles and across countries. They rely on demo-graphically representative household surveys carried out simultaneously among about 15,000 households in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom in 2016. For retrofit measures, the findings suggest that homeowners falling into the lowest income quartile exhibit lower adoption propensities than those falling into the highest income quartile. These findings provide support for policies targeting ""poor homeowners"", particularly in lower-income countries with a high share of owner-occupiers such as Poland and Romania. Further, differences in adoption propensities across income quartiles also exist for medium- and low-cost EETs such as appliances and light bulbs. Finally, analyzing factors related to homeowners' receiving financial sup-port from governments or utilities for retrofit measures suggests that differences in implementation rates between the highest and lowest income quartile would likely have been higher without such support schemes in place. For the United Kingdom (but not for other countries) these schemes appeared to have had a progressive effect.