Subject: Master
metering wastes electricity in UCLA apartment buildings
Dear Robert,
Thanks for your
message. As I understand our correspondence, no one at UCLA analyzed the
economic returns or the environmental consequences of master metering
electricity for the 1,384 apartments UCLA recently built in Weyburn Terrace and
on Hilgard Avenue. I hope the UCLA administration and the UC Regents’ Committee
on Grounds and Buildings will consider the issue of whether and how to meter
energy use in future UC housing projects.
Without any
analysis of the economic and environmental aspects of master metering, UCLA’s
decision not to provide an individual electric meter for each apartment seems
to have been based mainly on, as you say, the “value/convenience for our highly
recruited graduate student population.” If so, did you ask students what they thought
about metering?
I think most highly
recruited graduate students know enough about economics and care enough about
the environment to understand that master metering for electricity is bad for
both students and the environment.
Intelligent
graduate students surely understand that the rent for apartments in a
master-metered building will be higher than the rent for apartments with
individual meters. Because UCLA must increase the rent for apartments in a
master-metered building by enough to pay for the “free” electricity, the total
cost of electricity in a master-metered building is divided equally among all
residents, and it shows up as higher rent.
Students who live
in master-metered apartments cannot save money by saving electricity, and
students who are conscientious about using electricity subsidize those who
waste electricity. In contrast, students who live in an individually-metered
apartment can save money by conserving electricity.
Studies have found
that bundling “free” electricity into the rent usually increases electricity
use by about 25 percent when compared with individual metering. Intelligent
graduate students surely understand that they can therefore save money by
paying for their own electricity. All else the same, the rent that includes the
cost of “free” electricity in a master-metered apartment will be higher than
the rent plus the cost of electricity in an individually-metered apartment.
Master metering
also has environmental consequences. If it increases electricity use by 25
percent, master metering will increase the resulting air pollution and
greenhouse gases produced by generating electricity. In the attached
presentation, a graduate student who lives in graduate student housing
estimated that individual electric meters at Weyburn Terrace would have reduced
UCLA’s greenhouse gas emission by about 1.1 million pounds of CO2 per
year.
So I would argue that
highly recruited graduate students surely know enough about elementary
economics to understand that master metering is bad for students, bad for UCLA,
and bad for the environment. I have heard nothing that amounts to a rational
argument for master metering.
I understand the
temptation to push “highly recruited graduate students” out in front as a
shield for bad decisions about master metering. Please see this “highly
recruited graduate students” argument made at great length by the Director of
UCLA Housing in 2006 (Note: Prof. Shoup attached the 2006
document to the email.) The “highly
recruited” argument for master metering made no sense in 2006, and it makes
even less sense in 2012. I do not believe that UCLA’s best graduate students
are so economically naive or so environmentally irresponsible that they want
“free” electricity.
Naturally, I do not
expect you to agree with everything I have said about the benefits of charging
residents for the energy they use. Nevertheless, I hope UCLA administrators and
the UC Regents’ Committee on Grounds and Buildings will consider seriously the
possible economic waste and environmental damage done by master metering in new
apartment projects. I will be happy to work with you and Nurit Katz and any
others on campus or at UCOP who would like to study the issue.
Donald Shoup,
Professor
Department of Urban
Planning, UCLA
Doesn’t seem to be a
difficult concept to understand:
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