Publications
Publications
- May 2024
- Nature Sustainability
Housing Policies and Energy Efficiency Spillovers in Low and Moderate Income Communities
By: Omar Isaac Asensio, Olga Churkina, Becky D. Rafter and Kira E O'Hare
Abstract
Housing policies address the human dimensions of increasing urban density, but their energy and sustainability implications are hard to measure due to challenges with siloed civic data. This is especially critical when evaluating policies targeting low- and moderate-income (LMI) households. For example, a major challenge to achieving national energy efficiency goals has been participation by LMI households. Standalone energy efficiency policies, such as information-based programmes and weatherization assistance, tend to attract affluent, informed households or suffer from low participation rates. In this Article, we provide evidence that federal housing policies, specifically community development block grants, accelerate energy efficiency participation from LMI households, including renters and multifamily residents. We conduct record linkage on 5.9M observations of housing programme participation and utility consumption to quantify the hidden benefits of locally administered housing block grants in a typical entitlement community in the U.S. Southeast. We provide long-run evidence across 16,680 properties that housing policies generate 5–11% energy savings as spillover benefits to economically burdened households not conventionally targeted for energy efficiency participation.
Keywords
Energy Efficiency; Public Policy; Climate Change; Energy Conservation; Housing; Analytics and Data Science; Policy; Income; Environmental Sustainability; Real Estate Industry; United States
Citation
Asensio, Omar Isaac, Olga Churkina, Becky D. Rafter, and Kira E O'Hare. "Housing Policies and Energy Efficiency Spillovers in Low and Moderate Income Communities." Nature Sustainability 7, no. 5 (May 2024): 590–601.