The state of Washington instituted an automobile emissions testing and maintenance program in the Seattle-Bellevue area in 1982, the purpose of which is to reduce carbon monoxide levels to meet the federal standards. This study measures the impact of the program at two air quality monitoring stations in Seattle, comparing these stations to one in Tacoma. Six separate analyses of the program's effect on carbon monoxide are presented that differ by location, time period, and statistical method used. None of the six shows a significant program impact. The conclusion is that the possibility of a significant decline in carbon monoxide due to the testing program is remote.

The Seattle City Light Department evaluated its weatherization program for low-income homeowners to determine how much electricity was conserved, and whether the program was cost-effective. The study employed a control group offuture program participants in order to avoid the biased estimate that could result because participants are a voluntary, nonrandom group of utility customers. Surveys, energy audits, and electricity meter data confirmed the similarity of the experimental and control groups prior to home weatherization. Following the installation of conservation measures, the consumption of the experimental group declined by an average of 3400 Kwh per year, when compared with the control group. This experimental design is believed to have nullified the potential biases due to selection, testing, regression, history, and instrumentation. The bias due to mortality, defined in this study as customer turnover, was seen to be very minor. This design can be applied to evaluate programs that operate continuously, provided that the guidelines for the program do not change and that clearly defined measurements of program success are available. G ublic and private electric utilities across the United States have L developed a variety of conservation programs for their residential customers during the past five years. This effort has been spurred in part by the federal Residential Conservation Service, which began in 1979 and requires the larger utilities to offer a home energy audit service to their customers. From the point of view of the utilities, these programs are beneficial to the extent that they reduce the residential load in a cost effective way.Precise analyses of the cost-effectiveness of these programs are difficult to make because relatively little is known about the amount of electricity conserved by the programs. Several recent reviews have noted the lack of accurate research on residential electricity conservation and