The impact of DOE building technology energy efficiency programs on U.S. employment, income, and investment

Abstract

The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) analyzes the macroeconomic impacts of its programs that are designed to increase the energy efficiency of the U.S. residential and commercial building stock. The analysis is conducted using the Impact of Sector Energy Technologies (ImSET) model, a special-purpose 188-sector input–output model of the U.S. economy designed specifically to evaluate the impacts of energy efficiency investments and saving. For the analysis described in the paper, ImSET was amended to provide estimates of sector-by-sector capital requirements and investment. In the scenario of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2005 Building Technologies (BT) program, the technologies and building practices being developed and promoted by the BT program have the potential to save about 2.9 × 10 15 Btu in buildings by the year 2030, about 27% of the expected growth in building energy consumption by the year 2030. The analysis reported in the paper finds that, by the year 2030, these savings have the potential to increase employment by up to 446,000 jobs, increase wage income by $7.8 billion, reduce needs for capital stock in the energy sector and closely related supporting industries by about $207 billion (and the corresponding annual level of investment by $13 billion), and create net capital savings that are available to grow the nation's future economy.