Eric Hittinger
@elephanteating
Public Policy Professor at RIT, WILL International Chair at Univ. of Lille & Past President of the US Association for Energy Economics. Batteries, renewables, electricity markets, and emissions. Sometimes I bike across the continent.
So, I guess it is a pretty big flex for me to have lettuce on my (french) kebab....
First time in this shop that is 50 feet across the border. The selection is mind boggling
Perhaps more immediately interesting is this table that summarizes the key results from the work.
Each of those relationships took some doing and I invite you to click into the paper to see how we estimated the relationships as well as their uncertainty bounds. But the key result is a projection of retail energy use into the future:
We had to work out many different relationships for this work, but the simple workflow is approximately: get projections of online shopping time and spending, project the residual shopping time in stores, relate in-store shopping time to retail space, then relate retail space to retail energy use.
We then use that model along with projected e-commerce sales growth into the future to predict the time efficiency of online shopping in the future.
Wait a minute - is this a learning curve? We propose that it is: as e-commerce has grown, both customers and online retailers have evolved - consider how easy it is to one-click purchase an item today. So we made a model relating cumulative e-commerce sales to time efficiency of online shopping.
And we calculate the substitution effect between the two: it is faster to buy something online than in a store, and we can calculate how many minutes of online shopping it takes to displace 60 min of in-store shopping. In 2005, it was about 30 min, but falling to ~15 min more recently.
As you might imagine, online shopping time has been increasing a bit over this time (though much more slowly than online shopping spending) and the decrease is driven by less time in physical stores.
We started with the American Time-Use Survey data and found an interesting thing: starting around 2005, Americans are spending less and less time shopping (but are still spending more money each year, even after adjusting for inflation)
Hey everybody, here's a ⚡NEW PAPER(s) ALERT⚡ Wherein we take a deep dive into e-commerce trends and project what it implies about brick-and-mortar retail space and energy use. It took us 2 papers to cover the topic, but I'll put both of these (open access!) articles into one thread.
Also enjoying all of this Telsa brand electronics in an old bomb shelter in Prague.
Ok, I got a beer in that 14 hour window where it is permitted. I guess the policy restricts alcohol purchases to those with good planning skills....?
This is how bad it's getting in France: they are banning the sale of alcohol in stores. I actually went to the store to buy a beer and found this sign instead...
This is how bad it's getting in France: they are banning the sale of alcohol in stores. I actually went to the store to buy a beer and found this sign instead...
Going to France through Toronto is always funny bc it is like someone set up an acclimation zone between all-English and all-French.
Spotted this piece of history on the wall at the Niagara Falls Amtrak station. (There were no tones when I picked up the receiver, which I believe means it is not actually functional)
Love these early summer days when the solar is just printing money....
I'm co-chairing a Special Session at the IEEE Vehicle Power and Propulsion conference (Lyon, France, 5-9 October). We are looking for papers that relate to social & economic perspectives on EVs. It is a great venue for people (like me) that bridge between technical & non-technical aspects of EVs.
Why, yes, I was looking for an expensive upgrade that allows me to use more gasoline... share.google/xDtBLfw9GqYX...
Actually, this chart is probably the simplest way to make the point. Source: ourworldindata.org/low-carbon-t...
Seruous "Battle of Alesia" energy.... (I had to look it up, but it was the battle of Alesia where the Romans were both surrounding and surrounded by the Gauls.)
The last time I was there was the only time I've seen it without gray skies and rain.
At the Inagural Performance at RIT's Performing Arts Center. I've been watching them build it for more than a year, and it is pretty high tech on the inside. @rittigers.bsky.social