An efficiency analysis of household energy use

A new method to estimate the energy efficiency of households is presented. Households are treated as productive units organized to provide services for the occupants. The approach to measuring efficiency compares a group of productive units along several dimensions of input resources and service outputs. The comparison identifies a subset of units that are considered efficient because they require the fewest resources per unit of service provided. The efficient units form a production possibility frontier of best practice in service provision. All other units are compared to this best practice frontier and their index of efficiency is based on their distance from that frontier. Data from the 1979 Household Screener Survey are used to construct a household typology. Two different energy efficiency models are explored. One model uses the annual consumption of electric and non-electric fuels as the input resources. The other uses the annual expenditures for the two fuel types. Both models use the number of rooms and the number of people in the dwelling as proxies for the service outputs. A regression analysis of the two sets of efficiency scores indicates that the more efficient units used electric heat, had higher ratios of non-electric to electric fuel inputs, and were owner-occupied.