Projected regional impacts of appliance efficiency standards for the US residential sector

Minimum efficiency standards for residential appliances have been implement ed in the US for a large number of residential end-uses. This analysis asse sses the potential energy, dollar, and carbon impacts of those standards at the state and national levels. We explicitly account for improvements in e fficiency likely to occur in the absence of standards, but because our meth od for characterizing these exogenous improvements probably overestimates t hem, both the energy and cost savings presented; in this article represent lower bounds to the true benefits. Cumulative present-valued dollar savings after subtracting out the additional cost of the more efficient equipment are about $30 billion from 1990 to 2010. Each dollar of federal expenditure on implementing the standards will contribute $165 of net present-valued s avings to the US economy over the 1990 to 2010 period. Average benefit/cost ratios for these standards are about 3.5 for the US as a whole. Projected carbon reductions ate approximately 9 million metric tons of carbon per yea r in the years from 2000 to 2010, Because these standards save energy at a cost less than price of that energy, the resulting carbon emission reductio ns are achieved at negative net cost to society, Published by Elsevier Scie nce Ltd.