Utilizing smart-meter data to project impacts of urban warming on residential electricity use for vulnerable populations in Southern California

Abstract

Extreme heat events are increasing in frequency and intensity, challenging electricity infrastructure due to growing cooling demand and posing public health risks to urbanites. In order to minimize risks from increasing extreme heat, it is critical to (a) project increases in electricity use with urban warming, and (b) identify neighborhoods that are most vulnerable due in part to a lack of air conditioning (AC) and inability to afford increased energy. Here, we utilize smart meter data from 180 476 households in Southern California to quantify increases in residential electricity use per degree warming for each census tract. We also compute AC penetration rates, finding that air conditioners are less prevalent in poorer census tracts. Utilizing climate change projections for end of century, we show that 55% and 30% of the census tracts identified as most vulnerable are expected to experience more than 16 and 32 extreme heat days per year, respectively.

Feasibility of Afforestation as an Equitable Nature-Based Solution in Urban Areas

“…We estimate potential benefits and co-benefits of urban afforestation to better quantify the importance of such nature-based solutions beyond surface urban heat island mitigation. For this analysis, California is an ideal location due to widespread data availability, the state's susceptibility to heatwaves, and a rich scientific literature on the impact of urban afforestation (Chen et al, 2020;Hulley et al, 2020;McPherson et al, 2017;Shonkoff et al, 2011). While there are additional benefits to biodiversity, groundwater recharge, etc., we primarily focused on addressing tree cover inequality while benefiting the vulnerable populations exposed to excess urban heat and climate change 16 .…”

“…Here we estimate this decrease in energy consumption by combining estimates of urban AC saturation rate by California's Building Climate zones (ACp,z), with the sensitivities of electricity consumption to ambient temperature (T) and estimates of number of housing units (Hi) from the census data. The AC saturation rate is from Chen et al (Chen et al, 2020) based on reported utility data throughout California. This includes central air conditioning, room AC, and evaporative coolers.…”

“…For this climate zone, we take the mean AC saturation for the whole state, which is 0.77. Since Chen et al (Chen et al, 2020) provided sensitivity values for various poverty percentiles, we take upper and lower bound estimates for the highest and lowest percentile bins in that study. For each CBG, the total energy consumption reduction is formulated as:…”

“…For 35 cities in southern California, where we had data on air-conditioning penetration rates and sensitivity of electricity consumption to ambient temperature (Chen et al, 2020), we also estimated reduction in cooling load due to urban afforestation. For the MPUA, TREEGAP, and UHIGAP scenarios, this translates to mean annual savings of 697 GWh, 88 GWh, and 324 GWh, respectively (Fig.…”

Evaluating the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Residential Energy Use in Los Angeles

“…With 42% of US residential use due to space conditioning, ambient temperature is a primary driver of residential electricity use, especially with high air conditioning penetration [15,18,19]. Despite the mild climate in Southern California, Chen et al assessed a substantial (69% estimated) regional household penetration for air conditioning [19,20]. This includes residential air conditioning systems in different form factors and cooling capacities.…”