Economic and non-economic drivers of the low-carbon energy transition: evidence from households in the UK, rural India, and refugee settlements in Sub-Saharan Africa

Talevi, Marta (2020) Economic and non-economic drivers of the low-carbon energy transition: evidence from households in the UK, rural India, and refugee settlements in Sub-Saharan Africa. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

In this thesis I investigate the drivers of household clean energy technology adoption, looking at the role of economic variables, such as prices and monetary incentives, but also at non-strictly economic dimensions, such as geography, peer influence, health concerns, and heterogeneity in experience, priorities and perceptions of the technology. The topic develops into two main lines of inquiry. The first one explores the uptake of residential solar PV systems in the UK. In Chapter 1 I look at how the UK feed-in tariff (FIT) scheme contributed to shape the distribution of decentralised electricity generation around the country. I ask in particular how effective the policy was at triggering the siting of solar installations in locations with better generation potential. In Chapter 2 I show that peer effects contribute to the diffusion of this technology, and they act as complements to the monetary incentives. I discuss two possible channels through which peer effects may operate social utility derived from imitation, and social learning from information sharing among neighbours and find evidence consistent with a dominant role of the latter. The second line of research focuses on valuation of non-traditional cookstoves in Sub-Saharan refugee settlements (Chapter 3) and rural villages in Odisha, India (Chapter 4). I use stated preferences to investigate how different features of the cooking technologies and household heterogeneity affect willingness to pay. In the context of refugee settlements in Sub-Saharan Africa (Chapter 3), I complement the analysis by looking at how the non-traditional cookstoves distributed among the residents affect fuel effciency, health and safety, time use and the gendered distribution of the cooking workload. In Chapter 4, I focus instead on how positive and negative experiences with biogas for cooking affect the stated willingness to pay for that technology in rural India, and how experience interacts with risk aversion, time preferences, and credit constraints.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 2020 Marta Talevi
Library of Congress subject classification:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration
Sets:	Departments > Geography and Environment
Supervisor:	Mourato, Susana and Dechezlepretre, Antoine
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/4130

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