Author(s)

A. Hoeltl

Abstract

According to the Kyoto protocol and the EU burden sharing, Austria has to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 13 percent from the 1990 levels by 2008- 2012. The subject of house heating has an enormous unused carbon dioxide emissions reduction potential, which indicates that existing institutional conditions do not induce the required energy saving investments. The paper is aimed at developing an efficient incentive mechanism for implementing the Kyoto targets in the area of the residential housing stock. Current Austrian housing market regulations cause a cut-off of incentives for thermal-energetic renovation in the area of rental housing. Therefore the paper concentrates on developing an incentive scheme offering a solution for the investor/user problem on the strictly regulated rental housing market in Austria. Keywords: Kyoto targets, housing market, emissions reduction, rent regulations, investor/user problem, thermal-energetic renovation, incentive mechanism, Nash solution. 1 Introduction According to the EU burden sharing Austria has to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 13 percent. The Austrian climate strategy believes the largest reduction potential (28%) is found in the area of heating and other such private household utilities, due to the high consumption of energy in the housing sector and the mainly bad thermal repair of the housing stock. From the economic point of view the greenhouse gas and carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction is strongly correlated with the public good problem. This means

Keywords

Kyoto targets, housing market, emissions reduction, rent regulations, investor/user problem, thermal-energetic renovation, incentive mechanism, Nash solution.