engleski

Consumers’ preferences towards financial support instruments for residential energy

Households in Croatia are responsible for almost 30 percent of total country’s final energy demand and 40 percent of electricity demand. In addition, existing residential building stock has poor energy performance with heating requirements typically exceeding 200 kWh/m2. Moreover, with inevitable increase in energy prices, already significant problem of energy poverty in Croatia will further rise, and traditional social policies will not be able to tackle it effectively. Despite all of these facts which are putting households in the focus of national energy efficiency policy, the systematic energy efficiency activities and support instruments directed towards households are still missing in Croatia leaving the huge potential for energy and cost savings idle. High up-front costs of residential energy efficiency improvement measures, lack of access to the capital for home owners and low energy prices causing long pay-back periods for residential energy efficiency investments are identified as the most important barriers. As shown in countries with more advanced energy efficiency policy, state support to energy efficiency measures in households is crucial for their successful implementation. Additionally, the very nature of energy efficiency calls for a bottom-up approach, requiring individual commitment and a clear public understanding of the issue. Therefore, the participation of the public, in creation of support instruments for residential energy efficiency is deemed useful and necessary. The aim of the research presented in this paper was, therefore, to investigate citizens’ attitudes towards possible financial support instruments and to identify and recommend policy makers those instruments having the largest public acceptance, hence potentially the largest impacts in terms of energy savings. A public opinion survey was prepared with two major groups of questions providing the following information: (i) current levels of energy consumption, related costs and energy efficiency in households and (ii) plans to implement energy efficiency improvement measures and desirable financial instruments that would lead to the actual realisation. Public survey was conducted mainly on the Internet and partially in the field for those groups which are less likely to use online tools, i.e. unemployed and retired. The survey has gathered more than 1800 answers. This paper analyses the results of the conducted survey and discuss the possible policy solutions which would lead to increased willingness to undertake energy efficiency improvements in households.

energy efficiency; financial support instruments; households

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