Building energy consumption in US, EU, and BRIC countries

Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 2017

Although it is often stated that the energy consumption in buildings accounts for more than 30% of total global final energy use, only a few studies analyze updated data about the current building energy consumptions or focus on comparing different countries. Similarly, models that predict future trends in building energy demand often use contrasting algorithms which result in diverse forecasts. Scope of this paper is to present and discuss data taken from several studies about the building energy consumptions in US, EU, and BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries and to provide an updated inventory of useful figures. Comparisons among countries are used to show historical, actual, and future energy consumption trends. Data presented by the World Bank, the United Nations Environment Program, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the International Energy Agency are compared with national reports as well as with research studies. The variety of the approaches used in each of the previous sources was considered fundamental to allow a complete review. The paper shows that the total building energy consumptions in BRIC countries have already overcome those in developed countries, and the continuous increase in the building stock of the BRIC countries creates an urgency for promoting building energy efficiency policies in these countries. At the same time, the policies actually adopted in developed countries are insufficient to guarantee a significant reduction in their building energy consumption in the years to come. In the current scenario, at least a doubling of the global energy demand in buildings compared to today’s levels will occur by 2050. To avoid this forecast, cost-effective best practices and technologies as well as behavioral and lifestyle changes need to be diffused and accepted globally.

Energy and Buildings, 2014

Buildings in the United States and China consumed 41% and 28% of the total primary energy in 2011, respectively. Good energy data are the cornerstone to understanding building energy performance and supporting research, design, operation, and policy making for low energy buildings. This paper presents initial outcomes from a joint research project under the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center for Building Energy Efficiency. The goal is to decode the driving forces behind the discrepancy of building energy use between the two countries; identify gaps and deficiencies of current building energy monitoring, data collection, and analysis; and create knowledge and tools to collect and analyze good building energy data to provide valuable and actionable information for key stakeholders. This paper first reviews and compares several popular existing building energy monitoring systems in both countries. Next a standard energy data model is presented. A detailed, measured building energy data comparison was conducted for a few office buildings in both countries. Finally issues of data collection, quality, sharing, and analysis methods are discussed. It was found that buildings in both countries performed very differently, had potential for deep energy retrofit, but that different efficiency measures should apply. (Q. Shen), [email protected] (W. Feng), yljjw [email protected] (L. Yang), [email protected] (P. Im), [email protected] (A. Lu), [email protected] (M. Bhandari).

The building sector is considered as the biggest single contributor to world energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, a good understanding of the nature and structure of energy use in buildings is crucial for establishing the adequate future energy and climate change policies. Availability of the updated data is becoming increasingly important in order to allow a rigorous analysis. In this paper, recent data on the world energy consumption in both residential and commercial buildings are reported. Past situation, current status and future trends are discussed and analyzed for selected countries. A breakdown of buildings energy consumption is realized in order to determine the influencing key parameters. A whole section of this paper is dedicated to give an overview of measures and policies adopted by different countries, allowing the monitoring, management and reduction of the energy consumption in buildings. Critical aspects of these policies are discussed based on the feedback of the early adopters.

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2018

The International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) is commonly used to improve building energy efficiency, and its multiple iterations have been adopted by numerous countries, as well as most states in the U.S. The study assesses the effects and energy saving potentials of multiple passive and active building design features for new residential construction by using a baseline model designed to mimic existing characteristics of residential buildings in the Northeast region of the U.S. The developed model was verified for the two commonly adopted iterations of IECC codes to attain realistic results, and to quantify potential energy savings calculated beyond those that are provided by the Code. CFD analysis was used to assess indoor temperature variation and air velocity, together with an assessment for occupant comfort. Results indicate annual overall energy savings of 114 kWh/m 2 in a detached single family home, which represents a 39% reduction in building total energy consumption in addition to and beyond the energy efficiency gains required by the 2012 IECC. CFD analysis results also indicate that occupant comfort is not compromised by techniques analyzed. For an individual residential building in the studied region, the energy savings over its lifetime would total 500 MWh. At the regional scale, should all new residential construction in the next 6 years in the cold climate region of the U.S. adopt the studied techniques, their cumulative savings would exceed energy generated in the U.S. from solar power in 2016.

Energy and Buildings, 2014

This paper presents the construction of a dataset of energy use in 2010 by buildings in 10 regions spanning the entire world, broken down by sector (residential and commercial), end use (space heating, space cooling, ventilation, water heating, lighting, cooking, and miscellaneous (mostly plug) loads) and energy source (fossil fuels, district heat, biofuels, solar and geothermal heat, and electricity). Combined with estimates of the residential and commercial floor area and of population in each region, this 4-dimensional disaggregation gives an estimate of building energy intensities (kW h/m 2 /yr) or per capita energy use for each end use/energy source combination in each sector and region. This dataset provides a starting point that can be used in scenarios of future building energy demand but also serves to highlight discrepancies, uncertainties, and areas where improved data collection is needed.

Environmental Science & Policy, 1998

This paper provides an overview of recent ®ndings concerning trends and prospects for carbon dioxide emissions from the buildings sector. Reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the US Department of Energy note that buildings account for 25±30% of total energy-related carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions. This means building energy use contributes 10±12% of the increasing net radiative forcing that is inducing global warming. On average, between 1980 and 1990, CO 2 emissions from buildings have grown by 1.7% per year with rates of growth four times greater in developing countries. The high growth in developing countries is mainly due to changes in structural factors (demographics, economic growth) and increases in the amount of energy services demanded by energy consumers. Experience in OECD countries has shown that technologies and policies exist to signi®cantly reduce energy demand in buildings. Some of the main policy instruments to reduce energy demand include energy eciency standards for buildings and appliances, voluntary agreements, ®nancial/economic incentives, and market transformation programs. When converted to carbon emissions, energy forecasts of the World Energy Council suggest that business-as-usual trends will result in building CO 2 emissions growing by 2.6% a year to the year 2020, with the vast majority of the growth taking place in non-OECD countries. Signi®cant opportunities to help raise building energy eciency at home and abroad exist, should countries begin to more fully commit to mitigating greenhouse gases. Commitments by countries to contain the growth of greenhouse gas emissions in an economically sound manner is likely to induce signi®cant increases in the investment in energy-ecient technologies. #

… at the Summary Study of the …, 2005

A large body of literature points to the large cost-effective energy conservation potentials in the countries that joined the European Union in April 2004, but the present understanding of the size and details of this potential is limited. Therefore, the European Commission has started a project, managed by DG-Joint Research Center (JRC), with the declared aim to develop a bottom-up end-use electricity consumption database for the building sector in the new EU member states (NMS), candidate countries (CC) and in the Western Balkans (WB). This database will contain reference data concerning electricity consumption and savings potential in buildings (both residential and commercial), a sector which is using a large amount of energy and is considered by the European Commission to be a priority sector for energy conservation policy measures.

Energy and Buildings, 1981

The potential for energy conservation in space heating of new residential buildings is characterized using results from computer analysis, and from a survey of low-energy. houses. Simulations of the energy requirements of a prototypical'house in the United States at different levels of conservation have shown that much higher levels of conservation than those presently employed in new houses result in minimum life-cycle cost. Measurements taken in actual houses indicate that very low space heating energy requirements-comparable to that now used for domestic water heating-can be achieved in new houses by attention to insulation, infiltration, and solar-design principles. We conclude that building standards should be made more stringent to hasten the adoption of cost-effective conservation measures.-ii- ..

Healthy, Intelligent and Resilient Buildings and Urban Environments

In countries in which energy efficiency regulations are already consolidated or in the process of being consolidated, an important parameter to be verified is the relative consumption of electric energy of existing buildings in accordance with established ranges of consumption for different types of buildings. In the present paper ISO 52003-1 methodology was applied to create a benchmarking for office buildings for the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil and the work discusses the implications of using the standard's methodology for the Brazilian scenario. To fulfill this objective, it was necessary to gather electric energy consumption data for this type of buildings as well to survey for building constructive data. For the classification of buildings according to their consumption, a methodology was developed to isolate the annual consumption per area of the towers from EUI data for the whole building. Besides, information such as garages existence, lighting power density of the garages and the number of lifts was collected in loco as in many cases there was not access to the building projects. The results showed that due to the large variation in consumption data, the use of the average EUI instead of the median EUI value results in a better distribution for the towers energy consumption classification. This precaution can prevent excessive resistance in the market if a public benchmarking policy is stablished. Therefore, it´s concluded that the understanding of the consumption of electrical energy of the buildings plays a fundamental role in the establishment of goals for the new buildings.

Energy

The demand for energy in buildings varies strongly across countries and climatic zones. These differences result from manifold factors, whose future evolution is uncertain. In order to assess buildings' energy demand across the 21 st century, we develop an energy demand model-EDGE-and apply it in an analytical scenario framework-the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs)-to take socioeconomic uncertainty into consideration. EDGE projects energy demand for five energy services, four fuel categories, and eleven regions covering the world. The analysis shows that, without further climate policies, global final energy demand from buildings could increase from 116 EJ/yr in 2010 to a range of 120-378 EJ/yr in 2100. Our results show a paradigm shift in buildings' energy demand: appliances, lighting and space cooling dominate demand, while the weight of space heating and cooking declines. The importance of developing countries increases and electricity becomes the main energy carrier. Our results are of high relevance for climate mitigation studies as they create detailed baselines that define the mitigation challenge: the stress on the energy supply system stemming from buildings will grow, though mainly in the form of electricity for which a number of options to decrease GHG emissions exist.