Energy Conservation in the United States: Understanding its Role in Climate Policy

Gilbert Metcalf

No 609, Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University from Department of Economics, Tufts University

Abstract: Efforts to reduce carbon emissions significantly will require considerable improvements in energy intensity, the ratio of energy consumption to economic activity. Improvements in energy intensity over the past thirty years suggest great possibilities for energy conservation: current annual energy consumption avoided due to declines in energy intensity since 1970 substantially exceed current annual domestic energy supply. While historic improvements in energy intensity suggest great scope for energy conservation in the future, I argue that optimistic estimates of avoided energy costs due to energy conservation are likely biased downward. I then analyze a data set on energy intensity in the United States at the state level between 1970 and 2001 to disentangle the key elements of energy efficiency and economic activity that drive changes in energy intensity.

Date: 2006
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://ase.tufts.edu/econ/papers/200609.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Energy Conservation in the United States: Understanding its Role in Climate Policy (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tuf:tuftec:0609

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University from Department of Economics, Tufts University Medford, MA 02155, USA.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Marcus Weir ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).