ProSTEP: Promotion or Steering-Based Energy Policy

Work Package 3 (2016)

A scientific highlight of major importance is the completion of a detailed assessment of promotion and steering-based energy policies with regard to their efficiency and distributional effects. The study was carried out as part of the National Research Programme “Managing Energy Consumption” (NRP 71). Main findings include that the aggregate economic costs under "Promotion" are five times lower than under "Steering" for achieving the same targets and that the distribution of cost at household level differs substantially between the alternative policy paradigms.

In addition, it was shown that there are trade-offs between economy-wide efficiency and equity. This project has contributed a number of important insights that will be of considerable value for informing the public and political discussion on energy policy instrument choice and design in the context of the ES 2050.

Researchers from SCCER CREST:

Prof. Dr. Sebastian Rausch, Mirjam Kosch, Dr. Florian Landis

Research Partners:

ETH Zurich

Web Address:

Summary of the project and link to the final report on the NFP71 Website