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Speaker: Suchita Srinivasan, with the University of Otago

Improvements in energy efficiency are considered by many to be the "low-hanging fruit" for climate change mitigation due to their cost-effectiveness compared to other policy measures, yet in many cases, individuals and firms fail to make energy efficiency improvements. While economists have traditionally focused on the role of market failures in driving this under-investment, increasingly the role of individual-level behavioral factors in hindering adoption (or use) has also come to the fore. In this talk, I will summarize some of the main barriers towards achieving improvements in energy efficiency at the household and firm-level and provide evidence both from my research as well as from the literature on how relevant some "behavioral anomalies" may be in the real world. I will also discuss the role of policy and policymakers in overcoming these barriers.