IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/restat/v95y2013i1p34-49.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are Building Codes Effective at Saving Energy? Evidence from Residential Billing Data in Florida

Author

Listed:
  • Grant D. Jacobsen

    (University of Oregon)

  • Matthew J. Kotchen

    (Yale University and NBER)

Abstract

We evaluate the effect of a change in the energy code applied to buildings using residential billing data on electricity and natural gas, combined with data on observable characteristics of each residence. The study is based on comparisons between residences constructed just before and after an increase in the stringency of Florida's energy code in 2002. We find that the code change is associated with a decrease in the consumption of electricity by 4% and natural gas by 6%. We estimate average social and private payback periods that range between 3.5 and 6.4 years. © 2013 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Suggested Citation

  • Grant D. Jacobsen & Matthew J. Kotchen, 2013. "Are Building Codes Effective at Saving Energy? Evidence from Residential Billing Data in Florida," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(1), pages 34-49, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:95:y:2013:i:1:p:34-49
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/REST_a_00243
    File Function: link to full text PDF
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    building codes; energy; electricity; natural gas; Florida;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods
    • Q4 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:tpr:restat:v:95:y:2013:i:1:p:34-49. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Kelly McDougall (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://direct.mit.edu/journals .

    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.