No abstract

The potential effect of climate change on California's electric power system is an issue of growing interest and importance to the state's policy makers. Climate changeinduced temperature increases may exacerbate existing stresses on this system. Detailed recent data are used to estimate the relationships between temperature and both electricity consumption and peak demand at a sample of locations around California. These results are combined with new projections of regional climate change affecting California obtained by statistically downscaling recent global projections generated by two general circulation models, to yield estimates of potential impacts of future temperature changes on electricity consumption and peak demand, and illustrative economic cost estimates in several cases. Both current and prospective coping strategies, and priorities for further research, are summarized.

Empirical studies provide compelling evidence that economic agents do not adopt the complete range of energy-efficient technologies that are cost-effective under prevailing prices and market conditions. Analysts commonly attribute this anomaly to the use of high discount rates in energy-related decisions-an interpretation that is difficult to reconcile with standard models of rational choice. This paper recasts the controversy from the perspective of economic theory and finds that market failures related to asymmetric information, bounded rationality, and transaction costs are major contributors to the so-called "efficiency gap." Copyright 1995 Western Economic Association International.

This paper studies the impacts of state level residential building codes on per capita residential electricity consumption. We construct a timeline of when individual states first implemented residential building codes. Using panel data for 48 US states from 1970-2006, we exploit the temporal and spatial variation of building code implementation and issuance of building permits to identify the effect of the regulation on residential electricity consumption. Controlling for the effect of prices, income, and weather, we show that states that adopted building codes followed by a significant amount of new construction have experienced detectable decreases in per capita residential electricity consumption-ranging from 3-5% in the year 2006. Allowing for heterogeneity in enforcement and code stringency results in larger estimated effects.

Few integrated analysis models examine significant U.S. transportation greenhouse gas emission reductions within an integrated energy system. Our analysis, using a bottom-up MARKet ALocation (MARKAL) model, found that stringent systemwide CO 2 reduction targets will be required to achieve significant CO 2 reductions from the transportation sector. Mitigating transportation emission reductions can result in significant changes in personal vehicle technologies, increases in vehicle fuel efficiency, and decreases in overall transportation fuel use. We analyze policy-oriented mitigation strategies and suggest that mitigation policies should be informed by the transitional nature of technology adoptions and the interactions between the mitigation strategies, and the robustness of mitigation strategies to long-term reduction goals, input assumptions, and policy and social factors. More research is needed to help identify robust policies that will achieve the best outcome in the face of uncertainties.