Upgrading your home's energy efficiency makes your neighbors use less energy for over a decade, but only if the upgrade is visible.
Energy efficiency is usually seen as a private investment, but 'visible' upgrades like new windows create social contagion. When people see a neighbor's upgrade, they reduce their own utility usage by up to 2% for years—a spillover effect that doesn't happen with 'invisible' upgrades like attic insulation.
Is Energy Efficiency Contagious? Evidence from Peer Effects in Home Retrofits
SSRN · 6496749
This paper estimates causal peer effects in residential energy consumption using Canada’s largest home energy efficiency retrofit program. We combine administrative program records with more than a decade of house-level utility data from a mid-sized Canadian city. Our identification strategy exploits spatial variation in retrofit timing and compares houses located near retrofitted homes to those near “almost retrofitted” homes, properties that completed a pre-retrofit energy audit but did not un