California Energy Efficiency: Lessons for the Rest of the World, or Not?
Georgetown University - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
NBER Working Paper No. w19123
Starting in the 1970s California's residential electricity consumption per capita stopped increasing, while other states' electricity use continued to grow steadily. Similar patterns can be seen in non-electric energy, industry, and transportation. What accounts for California's apparent energy savings? Some credit the strict energy efficiency standards for buildings and appliances enacted by California in the mid-1970s. They argue that other states and countries could replicate California's gains, and that California should build on its own success by tightening those standards further. Skeptics might point to three long-run trends that differentiate California's electricity demand from other states: (1) shifting of the U.S. population towards warmer climates of the South and West; (2) relatively small income elasticity of energy demand in California's temperate climate; and (3) evolving differences between the demographics of households in California and other states. Together, these trends account for around 90 percent of California's apparent residential electricity savings, thus providing no lessons for other states or countries considering adopting or tightening their energy efficiency standards.
Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 39working papers series
Date posted: June 18, 2013
© 2014 Social Science Electronic Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This page was processed by apollo8 in 0.312 seconds