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

By Achyuta R. Adhvaryu, Namrata Kala, Anant Nyshadham. Review of Economics and Statistics, 2019

138 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract 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.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/58bbe2a8dab648f61c2281aa8daa3b573c311c01

Citations in the corpus

• Temperature and Human Capital in India (2020, unknown): “Further, LED lighting, which emits less heat than conventional bulbs, decreases indoor temperature and has been shown to raise productivity of workers in garment factories in India, particularly on hot days (Adhvaryu et al. 2019).”