State Mandates on Renewable Heating Technologies and the Housing Market

Abstract

We study the effect of a state level mandate on renewable heating technologies on the housing market. The mandate requires a minimum share of 10 % renewable energy sources when changing the heating system in the existing building stock. The mandate could lower the relative price of homes in the existing building stock. We implement a two stage difference-in-differences nearest neighbor matching approach to identify the effect on prices taking advantage of differences in regulation by location and vintage of the building stock. We find no evidence of a negative effect of the mandate on housing prices.