The Light and the Heat: Productivity Co-Benefits of Energy-Saving Technology

Achyuta Adhvaryu; Namrata Kala; Anant Nyshadham

doi:10.1162/rest_a_00886

The Light and the Heat: Productivity Co-Benefits of Energy-Saving Technology

Achyuta Adhvaryu¹; Namrata Kala²; Anant Nyshadham³

¹ University of Michigan, NBER, BREAD, and Good Business Lab · ² MIT Sloan School of Management, BREAD, NBER, and JPAL · ³ Boston College, NBER, University of Michigan, and Good Business Lab

The Review of Economics and Statistics 2020 open access

We study the adoption of energy-efficient LED lighting in garment factories around Bangalore, India. Combining daily production line–level data with weather data, we estimate a negative, nonlinear productivity-temperature gradient. We find that LED lighting raises productivity on hot days. Using the firm's costs data, we estimate that the payback period for LED adoption is less than one-third the length after accounting for productivity co-benefits. The average factory in our data gains about $2,880 in power consumption savings and about $7,500 in productivity gains.

DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_00886
Volume: 102 (4)
Pages: 779-792
Language: en
Export: BibTeX
Sources: crossref openalex