Climate change is viewed as one of the main challenges the global population faces in this century. Unsustainable energy use is one of the main contributing factors for the continued increase in global greenhouse gas emissions. Improving energy efficiency is seen as an important avenue to achieve sustainable energy use and hence, reduce emissions. While there are various energy-efficiency technologies that offer substantial promise for reducing financial costs and environmental externalities associated with energy use, there is considerable gap in the adoption of these technologies.
In this proposed study, the research team focuses on small and medium enterprises and investigates the effect of lifting knowledge and information barriers in increasing adoption of energy efficiency measures. They use randomized controlled trials where they assign firms in Ethiopia into awareness creation training, and training combined with energy audits treatments in improving SMEs adoption of energy efficiency measures. They exploit the variation in treatment to estimate the impact on improving the firms’ energy efficiency improvement measures. They roll out the interventions in collaboration with the Petroleum and Energy Authority of Ethiopia which is the government agency mandated to lead the country’s energy development and efficiency efforts.
