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This paper analyzes the 1992 and 2003 US Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey microdata files to show the extent to which certain heating, cooling, lighting, and window technologies are entering use, and the resulting impacts on the intensity of energy use. Excepting the case of fluorescent lights, no technology dominates the entire market but instead each conquers a specific niche. Most of the buildings in which these technologies are installed do not have lower-than-average energy intensity, measured as annual energy use per square meter of floor space. The exceptional technology that does measurably correlate with reduced energy intensity is daylighting. These results suggest that technologies are adopted to serve comfort or quality objectives rather than to save energy, or that buildings’ users confound the designers’ intentions. Decision makers thus should improve operating and maintenance practices, invest in building commissioning, and rely more heavily on passive design features to save energy.

Future environmental requirements are an important component of investment risk for long-lived facilities such as electric power plants. Yet the industry's current regulatory compact discourages proactive environmental investments, and thus encourages suboptimal long-term compliance strategies. This paper develops an indicative estimate of the resulting inefficiency by analysing a typical US power system. It argues that market-oriented regulatory reform can encourage environmental risk management by utilities.

Regional systems, increased competition, and environmental imperatives are forcing a reallocation of state and federal regulatory responsibilities for the US electric power sector. The great extent of regional diversity in the sector raises a policy relevant empirical question. Is this diversity due to choice or circumstance? This paper finds circumstance to be a more significant determinant of fundamental performance than choice, but also finds evidence that decisions at the margin reflect the diverse preferences of regional policies. This suggests a continued role for (more responsive) state level regulation in order to satisfy diverse preferences. Uncertainty about the optimal endpoint of restructing reinforces the value of continued state regulatory experimentation.

Electric utilities around the USA have profound differences in their existing capital stock. These affect the character of regional opportunities for reducing pollutant emissions. This paper introduces a simple system level emissions model and identifies cost-effective pollution reduction strategies for each region, given choices that include life extending existing capacity, investing in new technology, and demand-side management. It shows that superior solutions differ across pollutants and regions. This implies that policy prescriptions to reduce the environmental externalities associated with power production should recognize existing capacity characteristics in order to be efficient.