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In most countries, minimum energy performance standards (MEPS) and energy labels are the key policies to accelerate the diffusion of energy-efficient appliances and to help meet energy efficiency and climate policy targets. This paper estimates country-specific multivariate econometric models for eight EU countries over the period of 2007 to 2017 to evaluate the combined effects of changes in the MEPS and the energy labels entering into force in the EU in 2010 and 2011. The findings suggest that these policies increased the market share of cold appliances (refrigerators and fridge-freezer combinations) with an energy label of A+ and better between about 15 and 38 percentage points. For these appliances, autonomous developments (captured through a time trend) are estimated to range between 5 and 10 percentage points per year. Thus, failure to account for autonomous developments would have resulted in substantially overestimating the combined effects of MEPS and energy label policies in the EU. The findings further imply that policy evaluations should allow for policy effectiveness and autonomous developments to differ across countries.

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Agent-based models are used to explore how social networks influence the effectiveness of governmental programs to promote the adoption of solar photovoltaics (solar PV) by residential households. This paper examines how a common characteristic of social networks, known as network segregation, can dampen the indirect benefits of solar incentive programs that arise from peer effects. Peer effects cause an agent to be more likely to adopt a technology if they are socially connected to other adopters. Due to network segregation, programs that target relatively affluent agents can generate rapid increases in overall adoption levels but at the cost of increasing disparities in access to solar technology between rich and poor communities. These dynamics are explored through theoretical agent-based models of solar adoption within hypothetical social systems. The effectiveness of three types of solar incentive programs, the feed-in tariff, leasing programs, and seeding programs, is explored. Even though these programs promote rapid adoption in the short term, results demonstrate that network segregation can create serious distributional justice problems in the long term for some programs. The distributional justice effects are particularly severe with the feed-in tariff. Overall, this paper provides an illustration of how agent-based models may be used to evaluate and experiment with policy interventions in a virtual space, which enhances the scientific basis of policymaking.

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