Advertising energy saving programs: The potential environmental cost of emphasizing monetary savings.

Many consumers have monetary or environmental motivations for saving energy. Indeed, saving energy produces both monetary benefits, by reducing energy bills, and environmental benefits, by reducing carbon footprints. We examined how consumers' willingness and reasons to enroll in energy-savings programs are affected by whether advertisements emphasize monetary benefits, environmental benefits, or both.

Reducing U.S. residential energy use and CO2 emissions: how much, how soon, and at what cost?

There is growing interest in reducing energy use and emissions of carbon dioxide from the residential sector by deploying cost-effectiveness energy efficiency measures. However, there is still large uncertainty about the magnitude of the reductions that could be achieved by pursuing different energy efficiency measures across the nation. Using detailed estimates of the current inventory and performance of major appliances in U.

Valuation of plug-in vehicle life-cycle air emissions and oil displacement benefits.

We assess the economic value of life-cycle air emissions and oil consumption from conventional vehicles, hybrid-electric vehicles (HEVs), plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles (PHEVs), and battery electric vehicles in the US. We find that plug-in vehicles may reduce or increase externality costs relative to grid-independent HEVs, depending largely on greenhouse gas and SO(2) emissions produced during vehicle charging and battery manufacturing. However, even if future marginal damages from emissions of battery and electricity production drop dramatically, the damage reduction potential of plug-in vehicles remains small compared to ownership cost.

Using backup generators for meeting peak electricity demand: a sensitivity analysis on emission controls, location, and health endpoints.

Generators installed for backup power during blackouts could help satisfy peak electricity demand; however, many are diesel generators with nonnegligible air emissions that may damage air quality and human health. The full (private and social) cost of using diesel generators with and without emission control retrofits for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) were compared with a new natural gas turbine peaking plant.

A method for a comparison of bulk energy transport systems.

We model alternatives for moving bulk energy, including both private costs and accounting for environmental externalities by requiring the transport system to satisfy environment health, and safety standards. In particular, we focus on the cost and environmental trade-offs between "coal by wire," mine-mouth generation with electricity transmission, and transporting the primary energy resources with generation near the customer. Having the bulk energy transport model satisfy standards avoids the controversy associated with estimating dollar costs for constrained visibility, noise, and 50/60 Hz electromagnetic fields.