The researchers found that the upfront cost of efficiency upgrades of a large randomized controlled trial of 30,000 homes in Michigan came to about $5,000 per house, on average. But their central estimate of the energy savings only amounted to about $2,400 per household, on average, over the lifetime of the upgrades.
After the upgrades, homes used 10 to 20 percent less energy for electricity and heating. But, that was only about 39 percent of the savings that engineering modelers had predicted ahead of time. The program simply wasn’t as effective at saving energy as everyone thought.
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