Clean Development Mechanism

Last registered on March 05, 2015
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Clean Development Mechanism
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0000653
Initial registration date
March 05, 2015

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
March 05, 2015, 1:22 PM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country
India
Region
Gujarat

Primary Investigator

Name
Raunak Kalra
Affiliation
Poverty Action Lab
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Nicholas Ryan
PI Affiliation
MIT
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Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2010-06-15
End date
2014-05-23
Keywords
Environment & Energy
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Abstract
Policymakers frequently favor energy-efficiency improvements as a near-term means of carbon emissions abatement. Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have long stressed the importance of energy efficiency in any climate change mitigation strategy (Edenhofer et al. 2011), and the head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat recently hailed energy efficiency as "the most promising means to reduce greenhouse gases in the short term” (Doyle 2007). This favored position is based on the poorly tested idea that energy-efficiency investments are a low-cost or even no-cost form of abatement, as energy savings make such investments profitable for firms.

The study tests this idea rigorously by conducting a randomized controlled trial of industrial energy audits in India, a fast-growing developing country whose future emissions will be important for global climate change. The project has been carried out among small and medium sized, energy-intensive industrial plants in the state of Gujarat; their technology choices and energy use were tracked against a comparable group of control firms. The study measures the relation between engineering projections for energy savings and actually achieved savings. It also tests two leading economic hypotheses for why industry may not adopt technologies that appear privately profitable: information market failures – based on asymmetries or undersupply – and skill constraints that inhibit technology adoption.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Kalra, Raunak and Nicholas Ryan. 2015. "Clean Development Mechanism." AEA RCT Registry. March 05. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.653-1.0
Former Citation
Kalra, Raunak and Nicholas Ryan. 2015. "Clean Development Mechanism." AEA RCT Registry. March 05. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/653/history/3742
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
In the energy audit intervention, half of a total sample of interested factories received energy audits, during which auditors suggested investments to improve the efficiency of energy use and prioritize such investments by their expected economic return.

In the energy manager intervention, half of the sample of audited plants was randomly chosen to receive energy managers – skilled engineers – who stayed on in the plant part-time for approximately three months to implement audit recommendations. These energy managers liaised with service providers, oversaw equipment installation, and trained plant staff on new technology.
Intervention Start Date
2010-06-15
Intervention End Date
2014-05-23

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
The first intervention tests the pervasive hypothesis that two types of informational market failures prevent the adoption of efficient technology: 1) asymmetric information between firms and service providers may deter adoption of efficient technologies, and 2) information about efficiency may be undersupplied in the market because it is a public good. The energy audit intervention overcomes these obstacles by providing information about energy efficiency, specific to each plant and free of cost.

The second intervention tests the relation between skilled labor and technology adoption. If plants are skill-constrained, then those provided energy managers should adopt a broader set of technologies and save more energy than those provided audits alone.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The sample set is composed of 435 small and medium sized, textile and chemical industries in the industrial clusters of Ahmedabad, Ankleshwar and Surat in Gujarat, India. Of these 435 industries, 218 are randomly assigned into the control group and 217 into the treatment group that are audited by energy consultants. Half of these 217 industries ie. 109 are randomly assigned to the second implementation phase of implementation by energy engineers.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization done in office by a computer
Randomization Unit
Textile and Chemical Industrial Units
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
0
Sample size: planned number of observations
435 indusrtries
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
217 industries control, 218 industries treatment
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number
Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials