Greenhouse gases (GHG) are responsible for some climate change. Humanity faces a choice: either reducing the emissions of these gases or adapt to climate change. In this dissertation we focus on the first solution under the premise that a large part of the greenhouse effect comes from human activities. More precisely, we propose some essays on modeling the determinants of investing in reducing GHG through improving energy efficiency and substituting non-renewable resources (fossil fuels) by renewable resources. We first try and explain the slow diffusion of some energy efficient investments in a general equilibrium framework. We then study the determinants of switching from non-renewable resources to renewable resources when these are perfect substitutes. Finally, we account for the need of dirty resources even if cleaner technologies are available. All these issues are based on models that cannot be fully solved analytically, therefore we also propose in this dissertation a methodology based on the properties of Chebyshev polynomials to compute the solutions.
