Indirect estimation of willingness to pay for energy technology adoption

Abstract

Adopting energy-efficient and clean technologies is key to climate change mitigation and meeting long-term sustainability goals because they significantly reduce energy consumption and related carbon emissions. Understanding existing barriers and drivers for the adoption of these energy-efficient and clean technologies will be crucial to meeting ambitious national energy and emissions targets, and the customers’ willingness to pay (WTP) is a key factor in understanding the potential for scaling-up adoption. However, in practice, commonly-used WTP estimation methods such as survey or purchase experiments are not always practical or feasible due to budget, time, labor or data constraints. This study proposes a new constrained optimization-based indirect estimation of WTP for energy technology adoption using customers’ implicit life-cycle cost-benefit analysis and market data. The empirical probability distribution of WTP is estimated using the Monte Carlo methods. This new indirect estimation method provides a deeper understanding of the barriers and customers’ willingness to adopt high efficiency and clean energy technologies, and informs the development of supporting policies and programs needed to accelerate market adoption.