Economics of Decarbonizing the Built Environment
Recent federal legislation, notably the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, provide incentives for major investments in economy-wide decarbonization. These include initiatives to reduce the carbon footprint of the built environment by improving energy efficiency, promoting electrification of heating and other energy-intensive functions, building low-carbon urban infrastructure, and fostering carbon-reducing land use planning. These policy initiatives provide important opportunities to quantify the impacts of different interventions, to assess the cost-effectiveness of public investments in various decarbonization strategies, and explore the distributional impacts of these interventions on various subpopulations.
To showcase research on current policies and to identify lines of inquiry that can inform future policy design, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) will host a one-day virtual meeting on the behavioral responses to policy initiatives that seek to accelerate decarbonization, and on the supply-chain and other bottlenecks that could slow the impact of these initiatives. The meeting, which will be organized by NBER affiliates Peter Christensen (University of Illinois), Meredith Fowlie (University of California, Berkeley), and Chris Knittel (MIT Sloan) will include seven research paper presentations.
Topics that are particularly suitable for discussion at the meeting include, but are not limited to:
• The adoption and energy use impacts of building electrification, heat pumps, and energy efficiency programs
• Expansion and “greening” of the electricity transmission grid
• The impact of electricity rate re-structuring, data center energy use, and other developments on greenhouse gas emissions
• The impact of information provision, social comparison, and other behavioral interventions directed at households and firms
• Efforts to accelerate large-scale and utility-scale renewable energy development
• Public transit systems and other transportation initiatives including multi-modal transportation systems
• Land use and zoning regulations
The organizers welcome submissions of both empirical and theoretical research, including papers by scholars who are early in their careers, who are not NBER affiliates, and who are from groups that are under-represented in the economics profession. To be considered for inclusion on the program, upload papers by 11:59pm EDT on Thursday, November 30, 2023
Please do not submit papers that have been accepted for publication and that will be published by March, 2024. Authors chosen to present papers will be notified in December 2023. All authors will be invited to participate in the virtual conference. Questions about this conference may be addressed to confer@nber.org.