The impact of energy audits on energy efficiency investment of public owners. Evidence from Italy

Buildings are a promising area of energy savings, but a difference exists between actual and optimal\r\ninvestment in this field. The so called ‘information gap’ about the costs and benefits of energy-saving\r\nactivities could explain the difference. Audit programs have been undertaken to overcome the ‘information\r\ngap’ but, surprisingly, most papers analyzing the impact of audits on the adoption of energysaving\r\nmeasures use faulty methods that could provide biased results.\r\nIn this paper we fill this gap of the energy literature. First, we introduce robust counterfactual methods\r\nto analyze the impact of energy-saving policies; second, we apply these methods to investigate the\r\nimpact of the free-funding of audits on the energy-saving investments of local public administrations, a\r\nneglected area of investigation.\r\nAs opposite to most of the literature, we cannot identify any statistically significant effect of the audits\r\neither on the number of energy-saving interventions or on the resources devoted to these activities by\r\nlocal public administrations. We believe that, in the field of public non-residential buildings, information\r\nis not sufficient to fostering public investments aimed at increasing energy efficiency. As a policy\r\nconsequence, public resources should consider different tools, including those aimed at reducing the cost\r\nof investments.