2001 Residential Energy Data Available

The Department of Energy has completed part of its 2001 Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS), available at http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/contents.html

The RECS) provides information on the use of energy in residential housing units in the United States. This information includes:

• the physical characteristics of the housing units;
• the appliances utilized including space heating and cooling equipment;
• demographic characteristics of the household, including income;
• the types of fuels used; and
• other information that relates to energy use.

The RECS also provides energy consumption and expenditures data for: natural gas, electricity, fuel oil, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), and kerosene.

Data from the Household Survey portion on the 2001 RECS have just been   released. Energy usage and expenditures data from the 2001 RECS will not be available until early 2003. Until then, the 1997 RECS energy usage data are the most recent and are available at the above-mentioned website.

The RECS is a national statistical survey that collects energy-related data for occupied primary housing units. RECS was first conducted in 1978; the eleventh, and most recent survey, was conducted in 2001. In the 2001 RECS, data were collected from 4,822 households in housing units statistically selected to represent the 107.0 million housing units in the United States.

The RECS data are available for the four Census regions, the nine Census divisions, and for the four most populous States--California, Florida, New York, and Texas.

Page Last Updated: December 7, 2005