Does saving energy kill? According to research, it…
Saving energy in hot weather could increase death rates, a new study examining data from Japan showed this week.
The study, which will be published in the American Economic Journal of Applied Economics, argues that energy-saving campaigns conducted by the Japanese government after the closure of its nuclear plants following the 2011 Fukushima disaster led to an increase in rates of mortality.
" By leveraging energy savings targets across regions and over time, we demonstrate that campaigns significantly increased mortality, particularly during extremely hot days ," write study co-authors Guojun He and Takanao Tanaka.
Guojun He, director of research at EPIC-China, the Energy Policy Institute of the University of Chicago and an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong, said: “Climate change is already happening and encouraging less use air conditioning or other means of adapting to extreme temperatures can kill people living right now.
“A better approach in climate policy design is to accelerate the clean energy transition and encourage people to use more clean energy to protect themselves, rather than limiting electricity or individual energy consumption,” he added. A beautiful statement that should also be explained to European and Italian politicians.
Japan has regularly urged its residents to conserve energy to avoid blackouts at times of peak energy demand, such as on hot summer days or in winter.
Ahead of the summer of 2022, Japan has called on households and businesses to conserve electricity as much as possible, trying to prevent blackouts, as spare capacity is expected to drop to critical levels. Ahead of this winter, Japan has called on people and businesses to repeat the energy-saving initiative from the summer, as energy shortages and LNG price inflation continued to take their toll.
Japan is now bringing back nuclear power as a key energy source, trying to protect its energy security in the crisis that has led to soaring fossil fuel prices.
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The article Does saving energy kill? According to a research yes… it comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/il-risparmio-energetico-uccide-secondo-una-ricerca-si/ on Thu, 19 Jan 2023 18:02:23 +0000.