Policy Brief

Households that manually manage thermostats keep homes warmer in winter and cooler in summer than those using automated smart thermostat features, leading to increased energy use and costs. Expanding equitable access to smart thermostats and supporting behavioural engagement could improve indoor thermal comfort, reduce energy costs, and narrow disparities in thermal safety.

Uniform interregional electricity transfer capability requirements improve reliability of the US grid, but with lower cost and emissions reductions than a cost-optimized, region-specific approach. When designing interregional electricity transmission policy, the need for a reliable grid must be balanced alongside aspirations for a lowest-cost, lowest-emissions one.

By optimizing the timing of electricity purchases for electric vehicle (EV) charging at home, as well as shifting electricity purchases for other household loads, US EV owners could reduce their lifetime charging costs by 40–90%, and lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from household electricity use by 70–250%. Integrating EVs with homes can increase the greenhouse gas reductions they deliver, while reducing the cost of EV ownership.

Co-design of energy transition pathways with policymakers and the public lead to more significant demand-side reductions than current supply-side-focused policy. When policymakers work directly with academics to re-consider how and why we use energy in our everyday lives, politically feasible, significantly cheaper options with 45% less energy demand are possible.

In the USA, households with heat pumps tend to cool their homes earlier, and this adoption helps narrow the income-based disparities in cooling usage. Heat pumps can help to alleviate residential energy insecurity and contribute to making energy more affordable and homes more comfortable, especially in the summer.

A majority of US households can reduce energy costs and access affordable backup power during outages through rooftop solar and battery storage. Policymakers need to evaluate and adopt measures to ensure high-outage-risk and energy-burdened communities have equitable access to these adaptation solutions as climate impacts intensify outages.

Europe’s demand for high-energy batteries is likely to surpass 1.0 TWh per year by 2030, and is expected to further outpace domestic production despite the latter’s ambitious growth. To strengthen Europe’s battery self-sufficiency and competitiveness, policy-makers must accelerate the expansion of production capacity and implement reliable industrial policies that account for sustained demand growth toward and beyond 2030.

Central bank management of climate risks is associated with climate politics, as opposed to a country’s economic exposure to transition risk, including stranded asset and clean energy investment risk. Central banks are not entirely autonomous actors that correct for the lack of national decarbonization policy—they rather complement existing national policies that aim to shift the economy from fossil fuels to clean energy.

Increasing solar photovoltaic and wind generation capacity beyond European 2030 targets could make electricity prices more stable, with reductions in sensitivity to fluctuations in the price of natural gas possibly outweighing the increasing influence of weather effects. Energy policies should account for the macroeconomic benefits of more stable energy prices as an important motivation for the deployment of renewables, in addition to their contribution to the mitigation of climate change.

Large emission reductions in buildings and transport are possible by integrating demand-side strategies to electrify energy use, improve technological efficiency, and reduce or shift patterns of activity. With enabling policies and infrastructures, final energy users can make significant contributions to climate goals, particularly through widespread deployment of heat pumps and electric vehicles.

Biomass associated with low upstream emissions offers cost-effective renewable carbon for negative emissions and production of chemicals, aviation and shipping fuels, reducing the need for more costly options like direct air capture. Policy support for sustainable biomass use alongside emerging technologies reduces energy system costs and the risk of missing emissions targets.

Scaling up green hydrogen will be difficult if future projects solely depend on expensive subsidies to overcome competitiveness barriers. Policy makers need to implement supportive policies grounded in realistic expectations, focusing on hydrogen-specific support in sectors where electrification isn’t feasible, while also gradually introducing technology-neutral market mechanisms such as carbon pricing.

In the United States, Democrats and Republicans are more likely to support energy projects that are community-owned, create jobs, and generate solar energy, but local elected officials underestimate their constituents’ support for projects with these characteristics. Since these officials play a key role in approving new energy projects and negotiating the benefits they bring to communities, aligning local elected officials’ perceptions with the public’s could improve progress toward just energy transitions.

Community solar, a business model where multiple customers buy output from shared solar systems, has expanded solar access among multifamily housing occupants, renters, and low-income households. Policies to enable community solar could be expanded and benefits of access augmented through targeted measures to support community solar adoption in underserved communities.

Investment in climate and energy (climate-tech) startups is growing in the US and worldwide, with public grants backing high-risk sectors and publicly funded startups exiting at higher rates with corporate investment. Public policies to incentivize corporate investment in these startups can therefore be an important, yet sometimes underestimated, part of meeting net-zero goals.

Recent reforms of the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) boosted carbon prices by tightening the cap on emission allowances and increasing political commitment to it, which effectively made actors more farsighted. Policymakers should thus view prices as an indicator of credibility as well as scarcity, and manage potential future drops in the former by renewing commitment to the cap.

Zero-emission trucks will benefit from rapidly falling costs of batteries and fuel cells, which will enable their fast market diffusion. Industry and policy must prepare for battery-electric trucks with respect to their manufacturing and supply, adequate charging infrastructure and electricity grid expansions, as well as regulation.

Not all Australian communities are equally protected by consumer electricity retail regulations, with remote and Indigenous communities more likely to be underserved on multiple fronts. Communities in regions potentially critical to energy transition are often underserved by regulations that would otherwise ensure their own energy needs, hindering progress toward a just transition.

Low-income solar adopters are more likely to refer others to a fully subsidized solar programme when referral rewards are combined with an appeal to reciprocity and a simplified referral process, leading to five times as many solar contracts as when referral rewards are used alone. The findings highlight behavioural science strategies that administrators of low-income energy assistance programmes can use to cost-effectively accelerate programme uptake.

Compared to excise taxes and carbon taxes, setback restrictions on new oil wells have larger health benefits and worker compensation losses, but are more equitable by bringing greater benefits and lower losses to disadvantaged communities in California. For California to meet green gas emissions (GHG) targets, larger setbacks than currently proposed or additional supply-side policies are needed.