Hot or Cold? How Best To Save Energy Dollars

Filed under Green Energy, by Peter Elstrom on June 8

Interesting story in the New York Times today. It explains that the federal government is changing its emphasis in weatherizing homes. It is allocating a greater share of the stimulus money to keeping homes in hot regions cool than in the past, and a smaller share to keeping homes in cold regions warm. Now, 31% of total spending will go to hot-climate states, instead of the 16% that has been allocated in past years.

The Times asks some provocative questions, including whether the reallocation was a political decision to win more support from Southern politicians. But it didn’t really deliver on the key question: Which spending strategy will have the better pay off this time?

The article is written to suggest that you save more money by insulating homes in cold climates than by weatherizing homes in hot climates. But the evidence is hardly definitive. Though the article says that the U. S. spends twice as much money on heating as on cooling, that's just an aggregate number. It doesn't tell you whether one dollar investing in cold-weather states returns more in energy savings than a dollar in hot-weather states.

You get the impression that definitive statistics are not out there to answer this question. Anyone seen something more informative? I suspect there are all sorts of caveats to any study--like whether the sheer amount of money being spent in the stimulus plan will change the average energy savings in homes or which homes in hot and cold states are counted. Still, is there more quantitative evidence on either side.

Maybe it's not just about saving on energy costs either. Consider this defense of the reallocation:

J. Bennett Johnston, a former Democratic senator from Louisiana who pushed for the new formula at the time, said more people were dying from extreme heat than extreme cold. “This was not so much an energy saving proposal; it was more of an equity proposal, one that gave attention to public health,” Mr. Johnston said, adding that it would save energy.