The weather affects air conditioner purchases to fill the energy efficiency gap

He, Pan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1088-6290, Liu, Pengfei, Qiu, Yueming (Lucy) and Liu, Lufan 2022. The weather affects air conditioner purchases to fill the energy efficiency gap. Nature Communications 13 (1) , 5772. 10.1038/s41467-022-33531-2

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Abstract

Energy efficiency improvement is often hindered by the energy efficiency gap. This paper examines the effect of short-run temperature fluctuations on the Energy Star air conditioner purchases in the United States from 2006 to 2019 using transaction-level data. Results show that the probability of purchasing an Energy Star air conditioner increases as the weekly temperature before the transaction deviates from 20–22 °C. A larger response is related to fewer cooling degree days in the previous years, higher electricity prices/income/educational levels/age/rate of owners, more common use of electricity, and stronger concern about climate change. 1 °C increase and decrease from 21 °C would lead to a reduction of total energy expenditure by 35.46 and 17.73 million dollars nationwide (0.13% and 0.06% of the annual total energy expenditure on air conditioning), respectively. Our findings have important policy implications for demand-end interventions to incorporate the potential impact of the ambient physical environment.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Earth and Environmental Sciences
Additional Information:	License information from Publisher: LICENSE 1: URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, Type: open-access
Publisher:	Nature Research
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	3 October 2022
Date of Acceptance:	22 September 2022
Last Modified:	10 Oct 2023 22:42
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/153022

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