Ingmar Schlecht, PATHFNDR PI, in SRF program "10vor10"
Ingmar Schlecht (Principal Investigator in the PATHFNDR consortium) spoke on SRF's news program "10vor10" on September 1, 2022 about how financial incentives for private individuals could help reduce energy consumption. The interview builds on the concept of "supplier-financed energy savings bonuses”, which is also explained in a Handelsblatt article (in German) by Silvana Tiedemann, Lion Hirth and Axel Ockenfels.
Under this concept, energy suppliers (gas and electricity) pay households an energy-saving bonus if they manage to save e.g., 10% energy compared to the previous year's consumption. The suppliers (who usually bought their energy at cheaper prices a long time ago) could sell the saved energy at the currently very high prices on the spot market and use the revenue to finance the savings bonus. The government could mandate the introduction of such bonuses and ensure uniform communication throughout Switzerland. The advantage is that citizens would have a large incentive to save energy - and even benefit financially.
