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Energy Poverty Advisory Hub
Training and workshops

ENPOR Thematic Seminar: Examples from quantifying the split-incentive problem in the private rented sector in the national level

The split-incentive in building retrofit measures is “linked with cost recovery issues related to energy efficiency upgrade investments due to the failure of distributing effectively financial obligations and rewards of these investments between concerned actors” (JRC 2017) and is a key problem in tackling energy poverty in the private rented sector. 

The better understanding of the split incentive problem can assist policymakers in quantifying the financing requirements for promoting energy efficiency investments in in privately rented residential buildings among the landlords and tenants. Through such knowledge, policymakers can design their policies for energy efficiency upgrades and target more efficiently the private rented sector.  

In most EU countries, we do not have any studies or estimations on the extent of the split incentive problem, which leads to design of policies for renovation with a subsidy rate that is not often adequate or optimised as it cannot capture the impact of the split incentive. The purpose of this seminar is to show various methods of how we can we quantify the split incentive problem in a country, through surveys and methodologies that are unbiased and can generate useful findings for further policy design. It is especially useful for energy agencies as they can get inspiration or ready- templates with the questions that need to be asked and means of sampling tenants and owners, as well as ways to extract results from these surveys.

ENPOR project organises the online seminar on Friday 31 March from 11:00  to 12:00 CET. Registration required to join the event.

Contributions:

Christos Tourkolias (CRES) will explain how their survey with the participation of both landlords and tenants highlighting their contradicting perceptions in Greece contributed to assess the phenomenon of split incentives. Information will be provided about the design of the questionnaire, the sampling and the main problems. Finally, the main policy recommendations will be described also for addressing the problem of split incentives. 

Anamari Majdandžić (DOOR) will provide results from four municipalities in Croatia on energy poverty, focusing on the situation in the private rented sector and on the split incentive. In countries where unregulated rental market and unresolved legal relations contribute to the problem of lack of national data the market will operate in the shadow, thus policy design is difficult. Due to unresolved property-legal relations, in Croatia there is so-called free- based tenancy, where two separate families/households live in the same dwelling and extended families live in a joint household. Following the EPOV indicators, a questionnaire was developed as a tool to collect data, identify the key aspects of energy poverty and propose the criteria for its identification and indicators for its monitoring.

Hongguang Nie (Changchun University of Science and Technology) will highlight how the split incentive impacts technical and behavioural energy-saving measures in the household sector in Western Europe. Significant differences in the adoption of energy-saving measures between homeowners and renters were found in the survey data of 1,248 households from the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. The results of a study will be analysed that examined the influence of split incentive effects between homeowners and renters, which stem from differences between those who pay and those who enjoy the benefits of the adoption of energy-efficient (EE) technology and energy-saving behaviours. 

Dr. Lucie Maruejols (University of Göttingen) will highlight results of her study on the energy-related behaviour of owners and occupants of multi-family dwellings in Canada the possibility of environmental benefits from policies targeted at reducing the impacts of the behaviour of those who do not pay directly for energy use.

  • energy research | energy efficiency | private sector | investment
  • Friday 31 March 2023, 11:00 - 12:00 (CEST)
  • Online only
  • External event

Practical information

When
Friday 31 March 2023, 11:00 - 12:00 (CEST)
Where
Online only
Languages
English
Organisers
ENPOR project
Website
ENPOR project event's page

Contacts

General contact

Mara Oprea

Name
Mara Oprea
Organisation
Institute for European Energy and Climate Policy
Email
maraatIEECP [dot] ORG