Are Apartments Energy Efficient? via National Multi Housing Council

Several recent reports from both energy industry consultants and academics have suggested that apartments are significantly less energy efficient compared with their single-family counterparts. The proof: Renters use nearly a third more energy per square foot than homeowners.

This claim comes from the data produced by the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA’s) most recent Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) (2009). EIA conducts the survey every four years and sampled more than 12,000 housing units in the latest version. Researchers like to use this survey as a benchmark because of the high quality of the data; the energy usage and billing data get compared to actual data from the utility companies, which is something many private energy studies are unable to do.

Read more...NMHC Research Notes: Are Apartments Energy Efficient? - - NMHC - National Multi Housing Council