Residential electricity demand in emerging economies is rising faster than in advanced economies, driven by income growth, urbanization, and warming temperatures, yet the price reforms typically used to curb demand are often politically infeasible where electricity is subsidized. We test whether a low-cost, non-price alternative can reduce residential electricity consumption in this setting. In two randomized field experiments in Mérida and Cancún, fast-growing cities on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, households received a hand-delivered flyer that compared their electricity use with that of their neighbors and listed conservation tips. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that in the first billing period after delivery, treated households reduced consumption by 11.3% in Cancún and 9.3% in Mérida, and their bills by 18.9% and 11.0%. These estimates are robust to conditioning on baseline consumption, to using the consumption figures originally recorded in the field, and to bounds for selective attrition. In both cities, households with higher baseline consumption reduced their consumption most, in absolute and percentage terms, suggesting that utilities could target such interventions using billing data they already hold; in Cancún, households told they consumed more than their neighbors also responded more strongly. Because our samples are small and our horizon short, we interpret these effects, which lie well above the 1–2% benchmark from large U.S. trials, as a likely upper bound on what a scaled program would achieve. We argue that the scarcity of comparable evidence from the Global South is itself a policy-relevant gap.
Northvolt was one of Europe's most ambitious electric vehicle battery manufacturers and recyclers. The Group aimed to produce low-carbon and recycled lithium-ion batteries in the gigafactory Northvolt Ett located in Skellefteå, northern Sweden. Its rapid development and abrupt collapse in a seemingly favourable policy context provide a critical entry point into the political economy of Europe's decarbonisation and reindustrialisation agenda. Based on an interdisciplinary single-case study, this article reconstructs Northvolt's trajectory at multiple territorial and governance levels (across municipal, Swedish, Nordic, and European policy levels). It draws on a qualitative research framework combining documentary analysis, field visits in Sweden, and seventeen semi-structured interviews with a multi-level sample (workers, industrial actors, researchers, trade union representatives and policymakers). We show that Northvolt's arrival was embedded in a broader shift in transition governance, from sustainability-oriented goals towards geopolitical and supply-security concerns. Yet, this reframing lacked corresponding transformation of public intervention instruments, leaving limited public capacities for strategic coordination and crisis response. This article analyses how this policy architecture helped Northvolt to build financial credibility, but simultaneously failed to address the project's systemic vulnerabilities. Two potential drivers of the failure at Northvolt Ett are examined in depth: offtake-related constraints and operational misalignments. Overall, the article brings an empirical analysis of the collapse of a European battery champion to the literature on the political economy of the energy transition.
Retrofitting homes in the United Kingdom is a critical component of achieving the country's net-zero carbon emissions target by 2050 and a contribution to climate change mitigation. This is particularly pressing as the country is home to some of the least energy-efficient housing in Europe. Retrofitting measures are scarcely adopted in the private rented sector that faces greater challenges than social or owner-occupied housing. Building on an original approach at the intersection between new economic sociology and energy demand literature, we investigate intermediary actors’ relations in shaping landlords’ retrofitting processes through interviews with experts in Brighton and Hove. Intermediary actors, and their affiliations, have a critical role in advancing retrofitting processes; however, our findings disclose a relational void which results in a dysfunctional system ‘loop’ hindering landlords’ retrofitting process. Mainstream policy focused on finance-based solutions has proven inadequate in addressing retrofitting challenges; homeowners’ decision-making has been portrayed as based on financial gains solely. Our analysis stresses the importance of accounting for relational aspects in energy retrofitting policy to uncover enabling and constraining factors on landlords’ decision-making.
New energy infrastructure is often met with a so-called ‘not-in-my-backyard’ mentality in local residents. While much research on this topic has focused on renewable energies, little is known about the factors influencing public opinion on where to host deep geological repositories for high-level radioactive waste. Thus, this study conducts two experiments to investigate the effects of two potential explanatory factors and how they interact in a representative sample of German residents (N = 3015). Drawing on the literature on the ‘not-in-my-backyard’ mentality, the first experiment reveals that higher spatial proximity – i.e., a smaller distance in kilometers between a person's place of residence and the potential location of a nuclear waste repository – increases individuals' perceived personal relevance of the hosting decision. However, the second experiment shows that this effect is conditioned by regional belonging. While feeling affected by the hosting decision decreases for spatially distant sites that are located outside a person's own region, perceived relevance remains high when spatially distant sites are still located within a person's own region. Furthermore, mediation analysis reveals that this moderation effect also translates into stronger opposition against the decision and a higher likelihood for individuals' opinion expression even if the site is located further away. Future research should therefore extend the idea of ‘not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY)’ and should consider public opinion on energy infrastructure also as a ‘not-in-our-backyard (NIOBY)’ phenomenon in which social collectives rather than just individuals feel affected. This may also assist policy-makers when planning participatory practices with local publics on their energy projects.
This paper asks whether hydrogen technology patents improve ecological performance, and under what conditions. Using a balanced panel of 48 countries over 2000–2024 and a multidimensional patent value index, we estimate two-way fixed effects models for the load capacity factor (LCF), the ratio of biocapacity to the ecological footprint. We find that hydrogen patent value is positively associated with the LCF, with a level-dependent magnitude: a one-standard-deviation increase in transformed patent value is associated with an LCF 4.2% higher for an economy at ecological balance and 6.3% higher for one in ecological deficit. This gain comes mainly from a smaller ecological footprint and only marginally from greater biocapacity. The result holds under a shift-share instrument, heteroskedasticity-based identification, weak-instrument-robust inference, plausible-exogeneity analysis and dynamic panel estimation. Turning to mechanisms, a joint parallel-mediation model attributes 6.8% of the total effect to technical human capital and 7.2% to hydrogen production subsidy policy. The association is positive in both fossil-dependence groups, without a robust difference between them, but significant only in below-median-income economies. Panel threshold estimates show that it strengthens once institutional quality exceeds approximately 0.31 on a 0–1 index, turns from negative to positive once internet penetration passes about 92%, and becomes positive and statistically significant once a country operates three or more carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) facilities. For policy, hydrogen innovation is better assessed alongside absorptive capacity, digital infrastructure and operational carbon-management capacity than as a standalone environmental instrument.
