Regional Energy Profile
MIDDLE
ATLANTIC
HOUSEHOLD
ELECTRICITY
REPORT
Release date: December 22, 2005
Electricity Consumption
| Efficiency Standards
| Table D2-1
| Figures
| Sources
The following report presents newly released regional statistics for 2001. The statistics are derived from data collected by the Residential Energy Consumption Survey, the Energy Information Administration’s quadrennial survey of U.S. households. Similar regional statistics from the 2005 survey are anticipated to be available in 2007.
New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania comprise the Middle Atlantic Division, home to nearly one out of every seven households in the United States. The population of the region is largely concentrated in the metropolitan areas of New York, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Buffalo, and Newark. The 15 million households in the Middle Atlantic households consumed 116 billion kilowatthours (kWh) of electricity (Table D2-1), 10 percent of the U.S. total.
Average electricity consumption per household was not quite three-fourths as high in the Middle Atlantic as in the United States as a whole in 2001. The lower per-household electricity use in the Middle Atlantic is explained in part by cooler summer weather, which restrains electricity demand for air-conditioning and other cooling. Another factor was the Middle Atlantic’s relatively greater reliance on fuel oil (instead of electricity) for space heating and water heating.
Typically, an older housing unit will consume more energy for space heating than a newer housing unit. (Although newer homes tend to be larger than older homes, their average energy use per square foot is lower.) Housing units in the Middle Atlantic were considerably older than the national average. Eighty-one percent of Middle Atlantic households lived in buildings built before 1980, whereas only 69 percent of U.S. households did.
The Middle Atlantic Division had the highest prevalence of multi-unit housing in the country, which probably contributed to the relatively lower per-household electricity consumption. A housing unit in a multi-unit building, such as an apartment building, will consume less energy, on average, than a single-family detached housing unit. Apartments accounted for 39 percent of all housing units in the Middle Atlantic. On average, apartments were smaller than detached houses, and they also differed from single-family homes in other ways that could have affected electricity consumption per household. For example, apartment dwellers were less likely to have laundry appliances in their housing units.
MIDDLE
ATLANTIC
HOUSEHOLD
ELECTRICITY
CONSUMPTION IN
2001
HVAC and Water Heating
In the Middle Atlantic, heating, ventilation, cooling, and water heating accounted for 32 percent of all residential electricity consumption (Figure D2-1), whereas, in the United States as a whole, those end uses accounted for 40 percent. Twelve billion kWh were consumed for space heating, 11 billion kWh for air-conditioning, 6 billion kWh for furnace fans and other HVAC-related equipment (Figure D2-2), and an additional 8 billion kWh was used for water heating. That allocation of electricity differed from the U.S. allocation, in which air-conditioning use was the largest share of the HVAC total.
For household space and water heating, natural gas, and, to a lesser extent, fuel oil, continued to dominate the Middle Atlantic market. About 8.7 million households relied on natural gas as their main space-heating fuel, and 3.6 million used fuel oil in 2001. More than three-fourths of all households reported having access to natural gas. The Middle Atlantic States had five active natural gas market centers in 2001, and new gas pipeline capacity was being steadily added to the pipeline grid. In contrast, only 1.8 million households used electricity as their main source of space heat, although more households (3.3 million) had electric water heaters.
Air-conditioning equipment was used widely but less intensely in the Middle Atlantic than in the United States as a whole. The stock of central air-conditioning equipment in the Middle Atlantic was older than the national average in 2001, and older units are generally less efficient. However, fewer households had central air-conditioning and, partly as a result of cooler summer weather, the average annual per-unit consumption was less than half of the U.S. average. Room units were both more common and newer in the Middle Atlantic than elsewhere, and they also consumed less energy per unit, factors which tended to restrain total air-conditioning demand. In the Middle Atlantic, air-conditioning was a smaller end use than refrigerators, lighting, or space heating, whereas it was the single biggest end use of electricity nationwide.
Kitchen and Laundry Appliances
In the Middle Atlantic, the operation of kitchen appliances consumed 35 billion kWh in 2001 (Figure D2-3), a 30-percent share of total household electricity consumption. That share was larger than the share of electricity devoted to any other end use (as was typical of regions where air-conditioning was less common). One reason for the larger share is that both freezers and dishwashers were more common in the Middle Atlantic than nationwide. Another reason is that secondary refrigerators (the less-used refrigerators in homes with two refrigerators) were older in the Middle Atlantic and therefore likely to consume more energy than relatively newer secondary refrigerators nationwide: 73 percent of Middle Atlantic secondary refrigerators were more than 9 years old, compared with 59 percent of U.S. secondary refrigerators.
Although those differences -- more freezers and dishwashers and older secondary refrigerators -- tend to drive up energy consumption per unit, the average refrigerator in the Middle Atlantic actually used less energy over the course of the year: 1,058 kWh per unit, compared with 1,239 kWh per unit nationwide. The average freezer also used less energy. Possible reasons for the lower per-unit consumption in the Middle Atlantic include the cooler summer weather and the smaller size, on average, of the refrigerators.
Another difference between the Middle Atlantic and the United States as a whole is that, in general, electric cooking appliances were less common in Middle Atlantic households. For example, electric range tops were found in 44 percent of Middle Atlantic households and in 60 percent of U.S. households. The difference in prevalence was not reflected in range-top shares of total electricity consumption in 2001; in both the Middle Atlantic and the United States as a whole, range tops consumed 2.8 percent of the total. A likely explanation is that in the average Middle Atlantic household, HVAC use of electricity was low relative to the U.S. average, so that even if the average amount of electricity used for a range top was lower in the Middle Atlantic than in the United States as a whole, statistically, the range-top share of total household electricity consumption in the Middle Atlantic would appear to be the same. Another possibility is that usage patterns differed.
Clothes dryers used more electricity annually than any other U.S. household appliance except refrigerators in 2001. They accounted for between 5 and 7 percent of total electricity consumption in each Census Division. Perhaps due to more multi-unit housing and shared appliances, fewer households reported having clothes dryers in the Middle Atlantic than in the country as a whole. Of the dryers present, one in three was natural gas, compared with one in five nationwide. As a share of the total, fewer households in the Middle Atlantic reported having electric clothes dryers in 2001 than in any other Census Division. Clothes dryers accounted for 5.2 percent of total electricity consumption in the Middle Atlantic.
Lighting and Home Electronics
Lighting and home electronics were both significant electricity end uses in the Middle Atlantic in 2001. Lighting (including indoor and outdoor uses) consumed 14 billion kWh, a 12-percent share of total household electricity consumption. Home electronics consumed 11 billion kWh (Figure D2-4) and accounted for 9.6 percent of household electricity consumption, somewhat higher than in the United States as a whole. Color TVs alone accounted for 3.9 percent of the Middle Atlantic total. PCs, printers, and VCR/DVD players were the next biggest consumers of electricity in the home electronics category.
The Outlook for Electricity Consumption
In response to higher utility fuel prices, electricity prices are projected to rise in the short term (from 2004 to 2006). According to EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook (December 2005), the price of electricity sold to the residential sector in the Middle Atlantic is projected to reach 12.6 cents per kWh in 2006, while the national average price is projected to reach 9.6 cents per kWh. Retail sales of electricity to the residential sector in the Middle Atlantic are projected to increase by 7.6 percent from 2004 to 2006, higher than the projected U.S. average increase of 6.6 percent.
Over the long term, however, retail sales of electricity in the Middle Atlantic are projected to grow more slowly than in most other regions of the country. EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2005 indicates that, from 2003 to 2025, sales to residential consumers in the Middle Atlantic are projected to grow at a rate of 0.9 percent per year, compared with a projected growth rate of 1.6 percent per year for sales to residential consumers nationwide.
EFFICIENCY
STANDARDS IN
MIDDLE
ATLANTIC
The Middle Atlantic States participate in the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships, a nonprofit organization founded in 1996 to promote regional energy efficiency. Its Minimum Efficiency Standards Project was established in 2001 to look for ways to use minimum efficiency standards to increase energy efficiency; it now also advocates for enactment of standards. The Standards Project has focused on 19 products, including several that are used primarily in households: residential furnaces/boilers, furnace fans, torchiere lighting fixtures, ceiling fan lights, television adaptor boxes, and external power supplies (such as those that charge cell phones). New Jersey and New York have passed State energy efficiency appliance standards, while Pennsylvania has not.
- Pennsylvania introduced legislation in 2003 to establish minimum energy efficiency appliance standards for several residential and commercial products, including torchieres; however, there are currently no such State standards in place. In October 2005, Pennsylvania introduced a bill that would establish an energy-efficient appliance rebate program.
- New Jersey passed legislation in March 2005 that established minimum energy efficiency standards for 8 products, including torchieres; most of the products were commercial products such as commercial refrigerators and clothes washers.
- New York established standards for 13 products in July 2005. The products included ceiling fan light kits and consumer electronics, particularly those that use electricity while in stand-by mode, such as digital TV adapters, DVD players, and VCRs. New York also introduced legislation that would exempt Energy Star appliances from some taxes during two 7-day periods each year.
Efficiency standards adopted by several States were included in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which was signed by the President in August. The Act established energy efficiency standards for 15 types of residential and commercial appliances and equipment. The new standards, which were codified by the U.S. Department of Energy in October 2005, cover residential appliances such as ceiling fans and light kits, dehumidifiers, torchieres, and fluorescent lamps and ballasts, as well as commercial equipment such as commercial refrigerators, clothes washers, and automatic ice makers. In addition, new energy efficiency standards for air-conditioners will take effect in January 2006. Air-conditioners manufactured after January 23, 2006, must achieve a Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio (SEER) of 13.
ABOUT
THIS
SERIES
The Household Electricity Reports series (the newest Regional Energy Profiles series) is designed to consist of a U.S. report and thirteen regional reports on each of the nine U.S. Census Divisions and on the four most populous States (California, Florida, New York, and Texas). The reports are based on data from the most recent Residential Energy Consumption Survey, conducted in 2001. They will be updated in 2007, when data from the 2005 survey become available.
LINKS TO
RELATED
EIA DATA
PRODUCTS
Middle Atlantic Data Abstract
Middle Atlantic Appliance Report
Middle Atlantic Residential Energy Map
Middle Atlantic Renewable Potential Map
Household Electricity Data Sources
Regional Energy Data Sources
Residential Energy Consumption Survey
U.S. Census Regions and Divisions Map
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