IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v12y2019i23p4460-d290070.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Impact of Climate Change on Passenger Vehicle Fuel Consumption: Evidence from U.S. Panel Data

Author

Listed:
  • Hocheol Jeon

    (Korea Environment Institute, Sejong 30147, Korea)

Abstract

Climate change is around us today and will affect human life in many ways. More frequent extreme weather events raise mortality and car accident rates, global warming leads to longer growing seasons for crops, which may change farmers’ crop choices, and the relationship between energy demand in residential buildings and weather is widely investigated. In this paper, we focus on the impact of weather on energy consumption, in particular, gasoline consumption through the more frequent use of both vehicles themselves and the air conditioner of the vehicle that decreases fuel economy, which has not been paid enough attention in the literature. We estimate the relationship between fuel consumption and weather using unique U.S. panel data. We find that hot days increase gasoline consumption, but in contrast to the results of residential energy consumption literature, there is no statistically significant effect on cold weather. With climate prediction data from General Circulation Models (GCMs), we simulate the impact of climate change on fuel energy consumption. The results show that the fuel consumption in the transportation sector may increase by up to 4% under the “business-as-usual” (RCP 8.5) scenario. Also, climate change has heterogeneous impacts across the continental United States.

Suggested Citation

  • Hocheol Jeon, 2019. "The Impact of Climate Change on Passenger Vehicle Fuel Consumption: Evidence from U.S. Panel Data," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(23), pages 1-15, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:12:y:2019:i:23:p:4460-:d:290070
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/23/4460/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/23/4460/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dubin, Jeffrey A & McFadden, Daniel L, 1984. "An Econometric Analysis of Residential Electric Appliance Holdings and Consumption," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(2), pages 345-362, March.
    2. Mansur, Erin T. & Mendelsohn, Robert & Morrison, Wendy, 2008. "Climate change adaptation: A study of fuel choice and consumption in the US energy sector," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 175-193, March.
    3. Leard, Benjamin & Roth, Kevin, 2015. "Weather, Traffic Accidents, and Climate Change," RFF Working Paper Series dp-15-19, Resources for the Future.
    4. Jesse Tack & Ardian Harri & Keith Coble, 2012. "More than Mean Effects: Modeling the Effect of Climate on the Higher Order Moments of Crop Yields," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1037-1054.
    5. Considine, Timothy J., 2000. "The impacts of weather variations on energy demand and carbon emissions," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 295-314, October.
    6. Maximilian Auffhammer & Anin Aroonruengsawat, 2011. "Simulating the impacts of climate change, prices and population on California’s residential electricity consumption," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 109(1), pages 191-210, December.
    7. Auffhammer, Maximilian & Mansur, Erin T., 2014. "Measuring climatic impacts on energy consumption: A review of the empirical literature," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 522-530.
    8. Fan, Shu & Hyndman, Rob J., 2011. "The price elasticity of electricity demand in South Australia," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(6), pages 3709-3719, June.
    9. Maximilian Auffhammer & Ryan Kellogg, 2011. "Clearing the Air? The Effects of Gasoline Content Regulation on Air Quality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2687-2722, October.
    10. Eisenberg, D. & Warner, K.E., 2005. "Effects of snowfalls on motor vehicle collisions, injuries, and fatalities," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 95(1), pages 120-124.
    11. Vaage, Kjell, 2000. "Heating technology and energy use: a discrete/continuous choice approach to Norwegian household energy demand," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(6), pages 649-666, December.
    12. Xu, Peng & Huang, Yu Joe & Miller, Norman & Schlegel, Nicole & Shen, Pengyuan, 2012. "Impacts of climate change on building heating and cooling energy patterns in California," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 792-804.
    13. Olivier Deschênes & Michael Greenstone, 2007. "The Economic Impacts of Climate Change: Evidence from Agricultural Output and Random Fluctuations in Weather," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 354-385, March.
    14. Frondel, Manuel & Ritter, Nolan & Vance, Colin, 2012. "Heterogeneity in the rebound effect: Further evidence for Germany," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 461-467.
    15. Maximilian Auffhammer & Solomon M. Hsiang & Wolfram Schlenker & Adam Sobel, 2013. "Using Weather Data and Climate Model Output in Economic Analyses of Climate Change," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 7(2), pages 181-198, July.
    16. Martin L. Weitzman, 2011. "Fat-Tailed Uncertainty in the Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 5(2), pages 275-292, Summer.
    17. Chang, Yoosoon & Kim, Chang Sik & Miller, J. Isaac & Park, Joon Y. & Park, Sungkeun, 2016. "A new approach to modeling the effects of temperature fluctuations on monthly electricity demand," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 206-216.
    18. Chang, Yoosoon & Kim, Chang Sik & Miller, J. Isaac & Park, Joon Y. & Park, Sungkeun, 2014. "Time-varying Long-run Income and Output Elasticities of Electricity Demand with an Application to Korea," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 334-347.
    19. Yoosoon Chang & Chang Sik Kim & J. Isaac Miller & Joon Y. Park & Sungkeun Park, 2014. "Time-varying Long-run Income and Output Elasticities of Electricity Demand," Working Papers 1409, Department of Economics, University of Missouri.
    20. Sorrell, Steve & Dimitropoulos, John & Sommerville, Matt, 2009. "Empirical estimates of the direct rebound effect: A review," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 1356-1371, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Landry Frank Ineza Havugimana & Bolan Liu & Fanshuo Liu & Junwei Zhang & Ben Li & Peng Wan, 2023. "Review of Artificial Intelligent Algorithms for Engine Performance, Control, and Diagnosis," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(3), pages 1-25, January.
    2. Jian Gong & Junzhu Shang & Lei Li & Changjian Zhang & Jie He & Jinhang Ma, 2021. "A Comparative Study on Fuel Consumption Prediction Methods of Heavy-Duty Diesel Trucks Considering 21 Influencing Factors," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(23), pages 1-18, December.
    3. Yanning Zhao & Toshiyuki Yamamoto, 2020. "Do People Drive Light Cars Carefully? A Comparative Study of Risky Driving Behaviors between Light Cars and Others," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(7), pages 1-12, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Auffhammer, Maximilian & Mansur, Erin T., 2014. "Measuring climatic impacts on energy consumption: A review of the empirical literature," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 522-530.
    2. Li, Jianglong & Yang, Lisha & Long, Houyin, 2018. "Climatic impacts on energy consumption: Intensive and extensive margins," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 332-343.
    3. Matthew Ranson & Lauren Morris & Alex Kats-Rubin, 2014. "Climate Change and Space Heating Energy Demand: A Review of the Literature," NCEE Working Paper Series 201407, National Center for Environmental Economics, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, revised Dec 2014.
    4. Randazzo, Teresa & De Cian, Enrica & Mistry, Malcolm N., 2020. "Air conditioning and electricity expenditure: The role of climate in temperate countries," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 273-287.
    5. Enrica De Cian & Filippo Pavanello & Teresa Randazzo & Malcolm Mistry & Marinella Davide, 2019. "Does climate influence households' thermal comfort decisions?," Working Papers 2019:02, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    6. Enrica De Cian & Ian Sue Wing, 2016. "Global Energy Demand in a Warming Climate," Working Papers 2016.16, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    7. Richard S.J. Tol, 2020. "The Economic Impact of Weather and Climate," Video Library 2094, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    8. Salisu, Afees A. & Ayinde, Taofeek O., 2016. "Modeling energy demand: Some emerging issues," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 1470-1480.
    9. Enrica Cian & Ian Sue Wing, 2019. "Global Energy Consumption in a Warming Climate," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 72(2), pages 365-410, February.
    10. Zhang, Mingyang & Zhang, Kaiwen & Hu, Wuyang & Zhu, Bangzhu & Wang, Ping & Wei, Yi-Ming, 2020. "Exploring the climatic impacts on residential electricity consumption in Jiangsu, China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    11. Fazeli, Reza & Davidsdottir, Brynhildur & Hallgrimsson, Jonas Hlynur, 2016. "Residential energy demand for space heating in the Nordic countries: Accounting for interfuel substitution," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 1210-1226.
    12. Leard, Benjamin & Roth, Kevin, 2015. "Weather, Traffic Accidents, and Climate Change," RFF Working Paper Series dp-15-19, Resources for the Future.
    13. Zhang, Shaohui & Guo, Qinxin & Smyth, Russell & Yao, Yao, 2022. "Extreme temperatures and residential electricity consumption: Evidence from Chinese households," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    14. Dorothee Charlier and Sondes Kahouli, 2019. "From Residential Energy Demand to Fuel Poverty: Income-induced Non-linearities in the Reactions of Households to Energy Price Fluctuations," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2).
    15. François Cohen & Matthieu Glachant & Magnus Söderberg, 2017. "The cost of adapting to climate change: evidence from the US residential sector," Working Papers hal-01695171, HAL.
    16. Harish, Santosh & Singh, Nishmeet & Tongia, Rahul, 2020. "Impact of temperature on electricity demand: Evidence from Delhi and Indian states," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    17. Chang, Yoosoon & Kim, Chang Sik & Miller, J. Isaac & Park, Joon Y. & Park, Sungkeun, 2016. "A new approach to modeling the effects of temperature fluctuations on monthly electricity demand," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 206-216.
    18. Hongliang Zhang & Jianhong E. Mu & Bruce A. McCarl & Jialing Yu, 2022. "The impact of climate change on global energy use," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 27(1), pages 1-19, January.
    19. Koji Miyawaki & Yasuhiro Omori & Akira Hibiki, 2018. "A discrete/continuous choice model on a nonconvex budget set," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(2), pages 89-113, February.
    20. Connie B. Dacuycuy, 2019. "Energy consumption, weather fluctuation, and household composition in the Philippines," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 39(1), pages 380-394.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:12:y:2019:i:23:p:4460-:d:290070. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.