Modeling National Impacts for the Building America Program

摘要

In this paper we present a model to estimate the nationalenergy and economic impacts of the Department of Energy Building Americaprogram. The program goal is to improve energy performance in newresidential construction, by working with builders to design andconstruct energy-efficient homes at minimal cost. The model is anadaptation of the method used to calculate the national energy savingsfor appliance energy efficiency standards. The main difference is thatthe key decision here is not the consumer decision to buy anefficienthouse, but rather the builder decision to offer such a house inthe market. The builder decision is treated by developing a number ofscenarios in which the relative importance of first costs vs. energysavings is varied.