Assessing electricity reduction program under the presence of the other energy saving programs using quasi-experimental design: a case study of South Korea

Energy demand side management has been a continuously crucial assignment for policymakers, having a lot of benefits involving peak and carbon reduction, energy cost avoids, and security. It is timely to evaluate the performance of energy demand management program since it will carry out a salient role in the net-zero era. Quantifying the energy policy effects ex-post involves several challenges including the identification of certain policy effects that would be mixed with the other policies and biases that can be occurred in the experiment process. The randomized controlled trial design is a priority consideration but is still hard to realize. We suggest adopting a quasi-experimental approach of difference-in-difference combined with variance-in-adoption to measure the effect of a household electricity reduction program in Korea, which is not randomly designed and deployed with the other electricity demand management programs. Our results demonstrate that the electricity reduction program achieved 17.89% household electricity reduction. Also, extending the program period could contribute to lower residential electricity consumption, although the marginal increase rate was diminished by changes to the electric rate system. To promote participation and increase cost-effectiveness, differentiated policy by group and identifying the optimal program period are recommended.