Climate change and economic development provide a strong rationale for urban water and electricity conservation. Although behavioral and technological factors link short-term conservation of both resources, their long-term residential consumption trends have diverged across industrialized nations: from 1990 to 2010, per capita water use decreased, while per capita electricity use increased. This long-term ‘conservation gap’ has not generally been examined but it presents an opportunity to better understand what drives persistent residential conservation. Here, we analyze 2002–2012 water and electricity consumption from 38 000 California residences to characterize the conservation gap and its socio-economic determinants. Aggregate per-residence consumption figures show a 19% decline in water use—concentrated in the 2007–2009 drought—and an 8% increase in electricity use—coinciding with early 2000s economic growth. We find no meaningful socio-economic variation in micro-scale consumption trends across the study area but the ‘gap’ tendency is greater in residences with low customer-turnover, suggesting that widespread factors—including the proliferation of consumer electronics and small appliances—drove electricity use increases. Long-term water conservation was also widespread, suggesting that droughts provide immediate, locally-driven conservation imperatives that have been successfully leveraged for long-term water savings.Similar episodes were not generally available to electricity policy makers during the study period, but extreme climate events could drive energy efficiency campaigns in the future.

气候变化和经济发展为城市节约用水和电力提供了有力依据。尽管行为和技术因素将这两种资源的短期保护联系在一起，但它们在工业化国家的长期居民消费趋势却有所不同：从1990年到2010年，人均用水量减少了，而人均用电量却增加了。这种长期的“保护差距”通常没有得到检验，但是它提供了一个机会，可以更好地了解是什么导致了持续的住宅保护。在这里，我们分析了加利福尼亚州38 000个住所的2002–2012年水和电消耗，以描述保护差距及其社会经济决定因素。人均总消费数据显示，用水量下降了19％（集中在2007-2009年的干旱中），而用电量则增长了8％（与2000年代初的经济增长相吻合）。我们发现整个研究区域的微观消费趋势没有有意义的社会经济变化，但在客户流失率较低的住宅中，“差距”趋势更大，这表明，广泛的因素（包括消费电子产品和小家电的普及）推动了这一趋势。用电量增加。长期节水也很普遍，这表明干旱提供了由当地驱动的即时保护措施，这些措施已被成功地用于长期节水。研究期间，电力决策者通常不会遇到类似的情况，