Research
Job Market Paper
What matters for the racial disparity in clean heating technology adoption? Evidence from U.S. heat pumps
Abstract: A growing body of literature has documented that minority groups have installed fewer clean energy technologies, but the varying extent of this adoption gap and its underlying causes remain less understood. This study utilizes household-level demographic and property data to explore the racial disparity in air source heat pump adoption in nine U.S. East Coast states. I quantify the heat pump adoption gap between White and minority households at the ZIP code level, and then use a machine learning approach to decompose the contributors to the racial disparity. The gap in building age is the most important contributor, followed by income gap, cooling degree days, and natural gas prices or access. The importance of building age persists even when conditioning on income, possibly due to historic or contemporary discrimination in housing markets. The study also provides causal evidence that an increase in heating and cooling demand and natural gas prices can widen the racial gap in heat pump adoption. Policies may not necessarily alleviate the gap though. Loan programs slightly reduce the gap, while small rebate programs widen the racial gap.
Selected Working Papers
Effects of rooftop solar on the distribution grid (with Kenneth Gillingham, Marten Ovaere)
Abstract: Distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity has increased dramatically, but their effect on local distribution networks is still unclear. This paper estimates the effect of distributed solar generation on distribution networks, utilizing unique, detailed, proprietary data from individual solar installations and their specific generation, as well as the loading of connected feeders.
The economic consequences of local urban gas leaks: Evidence from Massachusetts housing market (with Morgan Edwards, Yueming Lucy Qiu, Pengfei Liu)
Impacts of heatwaves on residential electricity reliability: Evidence from power outage data at households in China (with Jing Liang, Yueming Lucy Qiu, Bo Wang, Shangwei Liu)
Revision Requested at Nature Energy
Assessing inequities in heat pump adoption across the U.S. (with Morgan Edwards, Jaime Garibay-Rodriguez, Jacob Shimkus Erickson, et al.)
Reject & Resubmit at Joule
Power supply disruptions deter electrification: Empirical evidence from electric vehicle adoption (with Yueming Lucy Qiu, Nana Deng, Bo Wang, et al.)
Revision Requested at Nature Communications
Peer-reviewed Papers
Jiehong Lou#, Xingchi Shen#, Deb Niemeier, Nate Hultman, 2024. Income and racial disparity in household publicly available EV infrastructure accessibility. Nature Communications. (Conditionally accepted) (#Corresponding author)
Xingchi Shen, Yueming Lucy Qiu, Xing Bo, Anand Patwardhan, Nathan Hultman, and Bing Dong, 2023. The impact of co-adopting electric vehicles, solar photovoltaics, and battery storage on electricity consumption patterns: Empirical evidence from Arizona. Resources, Conservation and Recycling. (Link)
Xingchi Shen, Yueming Lucy Qiu, Pengfei Liu, Anand Patwardhan, 2022. The effect of rebate and loan incentives on residential heat pump adoption: Evidence from North Carolina. Environmental and Resource Economics, 1-48. (Link)
Yueming Lucy Qiu, Yi David Wang, Hiroyuki Iseki, Xingchi Shen, Bo Xing & Huiming Zhang, 2022. Empirical grid impact of in-home electric vehicle charging differs from predictions. Resource and Energy Economics, 67, 101275. (Link)
Xingchi Shen, Pengfei Liu, Yueming Lucy Qiu, Anand Patwardhan & Parth Vaishnav, 2021. Estimation of change in house sales prices in the United States after heat pump adoption. Nature Energy, 6(1), 30-37. (Link)
Xingchi Shen, Yueming Lucy Qiu, Ling Luo & Xiaohao Zheng, 2021. The impacts of special environmental events on short-run electricity-saving behaviors. Environmental Research Letters, 16(9), 094035. (Link)
Jiehong Lou*, Xingchi Shen*#, Deb Niemeier, 2020. Are stay-at-home orders more difficult to follow for low-income groups?. Journal of Transport Geography, 89. (*co-first-author, #corresponding author) (Link) (CGS blog post)
Xingchi Shen, Shoujun Lyu, 2019. Wind power development, government regulation structure, and vested interest groups: Analysis based on panel data of Province of China. Energy Policy, 128, 487-494. (Link)