Hidden inequality in household electricity consumption: Measurement and determinants based on large-scale smart meter data

Abstract

Existing studies provide the estimates of climate change's impact on energy consumption, yet little attention has been paid to inequality based on fine-grained data. This paper takes advantage of the large-scale smart meter data to investigate the electricity consumption inequality and adaptation vulnerability issues. We find that there is a serious inequality underestimation issue arising from annual aggregate data. An average of 8.39% of the inequality is hidden every quarter, while the monthly hidden value reached 13.41% due to the seasonal offset effects. This inequality is the robust nonlinear inverted-N shaped relationship with temperature, which implies that the cold temperatures have a more severe impact on social inequality issues than hot. For cold days, one additional day in the range < 30 °F would result in an increase of 3.05% electricity consumption inequality. We also find households in high inequality cities have worse response ability when facing extreme temperature, indicating poor will suffer more from extreme temperature exposure. Policies to address climate-induced inequality issues would be more efficient if more attention be paid to the poor in cold winter.