Are Building Codes Effective at Saving Energy? Evidence from Residential Billing Data in Florida
利用佛罗里达州盖恩斯维尔的居民电力和天然气账单数据，评估2002年建筑节能规范修订的效果，发现该规范使电力消费下降4%、天然气消费下降6%，并估算了私人和社会投资回收期。
---Very Preliminary and comments welcome---In response to the 1973 oil embargo, many states began passing building energy codes in order to promote energy efficiency. While the vast majority of states have energy codes in place, policy-makers are now attempting to legislate energy codes at the federal level to help address more re-cent concerns about energy and climate change. Despite widespread implementation of energy codes and calls for greater stringency in the future, surprisingly little is known about whether en-ergy codes are an effective way to reduce energy consumption in practice. While the existing evidence comes mostly from engineering simulations, this paper provides one of the first evalua-tions of an energy-code change that uses residential billing data on electricity and natural-gas consumption. Using data from Gainesville, Florida, we find that the state’s energy-code change that took effect in 2002 is associated with a 4-percent decrease in electricity consumption and a 6-percent decrease in natural-gas consumption. The pattern of savings is consistent with reduced consumption of electricity for air-conditioning and reduced consumption of natural gas for heat-ing. We also estimate economic costs and benefits. We find that, under the best-case scenario, the private payback period for the average residence is 7.5 years. The social payback period, which accounts for the avoided costs of air-pollution emissions, ranges between 4 and 6 years, depending on whether avoided damages from carbon dioxide are included.