Climate Change, Air Conditioning Adoption, and Household Electricity Use: Evidence from the Northwestern United States

Quantifying the long-term impacts of temperature on energy consumption is essential for informing greenhouse gas emissions mitigation and climate adaptation policies. Using a unique panel dataset of high-frequency household energy end uses, we examine air conditioning (AC) as a climate adaptation strategy and analyze device-level temperature effects on electricity use in single-family homes in the Northwestern United States. We find that rising exposure to high temperatures lifts the likelihood of AC adoption and leads to higher electricity use among households with AC. It does not, however, significantly impact electricity use in households without AC. Furthermore, while AC adoption amplifies the effect of rising exposure to high temperatures on household electricity use, this effect is confined to space cooling and does not extend to other end uses. Our projections suggest that, under moderate and intense warming scenarios, AC adoption rates among single-family homes will increase by approximately 20 and 27 percentage points, respectively, by the mid-21st century relative to a no-climate-change baseline (temperatures fixed at 2006–2015 levels). This expansion in AC usage is expected to account for approximately 65% of the warming-induced increase in electricity demand for space cooling.