Interactions between fuel choice and energy-efficiency in new homes in the Pacific Northwest.

摘要

In recent years the Bonneville Power Administration has instituted programs to prompt the implementation of the residential Model Conservation Standards (MCS) issued by the Northwest Power Planning Council (Council) in 1983. These standards provide alternative methods for designing and constructing homes to cost effectively reduce residential energy consumption. Authority exists to apply them only to new, electrically heated homes. Because they apply to electrically heated homes, concerns have arisen about how the standards might affect buyers' decisions to purchase a new home, in particular, their choice of a heating fuel. Early data suggested that electricity started losing market share in Tacoma about when the MCS went into effect in 1984, and recent data have shown that about half of electricity's share of the new home market has shifted to natural gas. This decline in electric heating was consistent with concerns about the possible detrimental effect of the cost of MCS on sales of electrically heated homes. A desire to understand the causes of the perceived decline in electricity's market share was part of the impetus for this study. Multiple techniques and data sources are used in this study to examine the relationship between residential energy-efficiency and fuel choice in the major metropolitan areas in Washington: Spokane, Clark, Pierce, and King Counties. Recent regional surveys have shown that electricity is the predominant space heating fuel in the Pacific Northwest, but it appears to be losing its dominance in some markets such as Tacoma.