24. Analysis on the Influencing Factors of Building Energy Consumption—A Southwest China Case Study

The Chinese government has been closely watching its domestic energy consumption, in which buildings are the largest consumers. This paper discloses the impacts of the most significant influencing factors on building energy consumption in Southwest China by employing Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology (STPRAT) theory. The authors focus on examining six main factors (i.e., population size, urbanization ratio, Per Capita Value-added of Tertiary Industry at Constant Prices (VTP), Consumer Price Index (CPI), Retail Price Index (RPI), patent number) from three perspectives including population, affluence and technology. With the assistance of mathematical statistics software, the authors calculated the elasticity coefficient and importance degree of the six factors in referring to their impacts on building energy consumption in Southwest China. Results of this paper suggest that all the factors in three perspectives affect energy consumption; and the patent number has the largest impact. The effect of the population size to the energy consumption level is small.