EI @ Haas WP 243 Rethinking the Energy-Efficiency Gap: Producers, Intermediaries, and Innovation Carl Blumstein and Margaret Taylor May 2013 Energy Institute at Haas working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to review by any editorial board. © 2013 by Carl Blumstein and Margaret Taylor. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit is given to the source. http://ei.haas.berkeley.edu Rethinking the Energy-Efficiency Gap: Producers, Intermediaries, and Innovation May 2013 Carl Blumstein California Institute for Energy and Environment 2087 Addison Street, 2nd Floor Berkeley, CA 94704 Email:
[email protected] Margaret Taylor Precourt Energy Efficiency Center, Stanford University Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Environment and Energy Building 473 Via Ortega, Room 385 Stanford, CA 94305-4206 Email:
[email protected] Abstract The economic justification for energy efficiency policy primarily focuses on market failures and barriers that prevent energy consumers from undertaking privately profitable investments in efficiency. These consumer- oriented market imperfections are the subject of a substantial and growing body of research regarding human behaviour and economic incentives that influence the demand for energy-efficient technologies. But the literature has focused much less on the producers of energy efficient technologies, and intermediaries such as retailers,