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Buildings consume around 40% of energy and emit 36% of CO2 emissions and, as the largest single energy consumer in Europe, offer the opportunity for significant savings. Building energy labels, also known as Energy Performance Certificates, are a method of providing home buyers with information about the estimated energy consumption of a particular home, enabling them to make more informed decisions in the property market and hopefully encouraging the construction of more energy-efficient homes because of the extra premiums they should charge. There is imperfect information available on the cost-saving effects of efficiency improvements, and the aim of this paper is to examine the role of current building energy labels and the effects of framing this information in terms of its monetary impact on energy bills by conducting a discrete choice experiment. The modelling results show that when monetary estimates are included as part of Energy Performance Certificates, the willingness to pay for higher levels of building energy performance increases by 47%. These results suggest that the inclusion of such monetary information has the potential to increase the value that consumers attach to more energy-efficient homes, thereby creating an incentive to either build better energy-efficient homes or retrofit current housing stock to increase its value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Which attributes are the most important when buying a property? How much do individuals value energy efficiency? What discount rates do individuals employ when investing in energy efficiency and which factors influence them? This paper examines the results of a stated preference consumer survey undertaken in Slovenia in late 2017 to investigate these questions, also trying to answer how much the consumers are willing to consider future energy savings associated with the purchase of advanced home heating controls. The results show that energy efficiency as a decision-making attribute is very important for Slovenians, being the second most important after the property price. Females, environmentally aware and married individuals are more likely to value energy efficiency highly when buying a property. Interest in energy-efficient heating controls’ investment confirms the notion that people tend to discount the future benefits at 40%, on average, and give more importance to future energy savings when the investment cost is higher. Females favour higher implicit discount rates and shorter payback periods and therefore expect a higher return (energy savings) on the investment while people with higher education levels value future costs more and are willing to invest more due to the increased benefits of energy efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]