Italian consumers’ WTP for green electricity

Energy situation in many developed countries is bad and getting worse. In the past much of emphasis on climate change action has been based on the precautionary principle; now population awareness has increased and it is more widely accepted that climate change and resource depletion are a real issue to be dealt with. Cosequently consumers regard environmental problems as important and think that promoting RES use will mitigate environmental damages and they are likely to attach a value to RES. The institutional and political Italian setting have brought new aims in compliance with the European Union consequently, in reference to the “Renewable Sources” EU Directive 2001/77/CE, the Italian goal, for 2010 is to attain the share of 22% in RES electricity production. Even in early 2007, UE new goals, namely 20-20-20, have indicated 20% of total energy resources by year 2020, together with a 20% goal of energy savings, so in such setting it has became crucial to explore the existence of Italian consumer’s WTP in order to use “green energy” in the electricity production. Consistently with this Italian energy scenario the primary purpose of this study is to estimate consumers’ WTP for the development of the “green electricity” in Italy using double bound method and DeShazo (2002) theoretical framework.