ESSAYS ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS

Abstract

This dissertation examines the design and impacts of clean-energy and transportation pricing policies, exploring how rebates, taxes, and exemptions influence technology adoption, economic efficiency, and environmental outcomes. Across detailed empirical analyses in both the U.S. and Norway, the research identifies key behavioral responses to policy interventions, revealing circumstances under which incentives significantly accelerate adoption but may also generate large unintended fiscal and environmental costs. Chapter 1 assesses the impact of policy incentives on the adoption of residential energy storage systems, focusing on California's Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) from 2017 to 2022. I find that upfront rebates significantly influence the installation of residential energy storage systems (ESS). Using variation in rebate rates over time between electric utility companies and controlling for other factors that affect adoption, I find that a $0.05/Wh decrease in rebate rates-the typical step change in this policy-decreases the adoption of ESS by 15.2%. In general, I estimate that installations would have been 42 percent lower without the incentives. Based on my model's estimates, from the total of $177 million in incentives distributed, $74 million was allocated to people who likely would have installed them regardless of the program's existence. Chapter 2 studies how Norway's one-time registration tax on new vehicles affects car sales and vehicle type choice between 2013 and 2022. Using detailed vehicle registration micro-data combined with changes in tax schedules across time and models, I estimate an elasticity of approximately −0.6 for new car sales with respect to the registration tax burden. Counterfactual simulations show that removing existing electric vehicle (EV) exemptions in the import tax would reduce EV sales by about 15%, while eliminating import taxes for all vehicles would lower EV adoption by roughly 21%. By contrast, a Pigouvian tax system that targets each vehicle type's external damages reduces EV adoption by only around 10%. Decomposing the tax schedule reveals that CO2 and engine-power components have strong and precisely estimated effects on purchase decisions, whereas weight and NOx taxes play a more limited role. Tax responsiveness also varies across emission bands, vehicle classes, body types, and fuel types, with lower-emission and smaller vehicles reacting more strongly to tax changes. An externality-based tax scheme that more directly prices environmental damages generates greater government revenue while preserving much of the EV uptake. Overall, the results highlight the quantitative trade-offs policymakers face between fiscal and environmental objectives and indicate that well-targeted fiscal instruments can effectively steer the vehicle fleet toward cleaner technologies. Chapter 3 examines how Norway's vehicle registration tax shapes the used-car market between 2013 and 2022. I focus on the domestic resales of used vehicles rather than imported used vehicles since they constitute 95% of the used car market in the study period. I estimate the effect of this tax on used-car sales, taking advantage of variation in the tax between models, ages, and years. Across baseline specifications, a one thousand NOK increase in the transfer fee is associated with a 10-14% reduction in sales, implying semi-elasticities of about −0.4 to −0.6 with respect to the tax. Heterogeneity analyses show that responsiveness is strongest for mid-range vehicles in the 71-160 g/km emission bands whereas sales in the very low and very high tax segments are less sensitive. A counterfactual experiment that halves the registration tax suggests that actual sales are only 80-90% of the levels predicted under the lower fee, so that current taxes discourage roughly 10-20% of potential trades. The same exercise implies that government revenue would fall by about 35%, from 18.9 to 12.3 billion NOK over 2013-2022, because the mechanical revenue loss on infra-marginal trades dominates the modest revenue gain from additional transactions. Taken together, the results show that this tax is an effective but costly instrument for influencing used-car market activity and highlight a quantitative trade-off between fiscal revenue, market liquidity, and mobility when reforming vehicle registration taxes.