The Impact of Building Energy Codes on the Energy Efficiency of Residential Space Heating in European countries - A Stochastic Frontier Approach

Over the past 40 years, IEA member countries have gradually implemented building energy codes. However, assessing their impact on residential energy consumption remains difficult. This paper proposes to estimate the impact of the implementation of building energy codes on the evolution of residential space heating energy efficiency in Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom using a stochastic frontier approach. We specify a stochastic frontier demand function for space heating energy consumption, which we estimate on a panel data set covering the seven European countries considered from 1990 to 2008. We first use Battese & Coelli (1992) econometric specification to estimate the evolution of space heating energy efficiency over time. We then use Battese & Coelli (1995) specification to assess the impact of buildings energy codes on this evolution. By representing the implementation of building energy codes by the number of years for which they have been enacted in each country, we find a statistically significant effect of building energy codes on the improvement of residential space heating energy efficiency in the seven European countries considered. Availability of quality data has proved to be a limiting factor in this analysis. Future work can include the expansion of the panel to European and non-European countries as data quality will allow.

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