Energy consumption and efficiency in buildings: current status and future trends

Abstract

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.

Introduction

The sustainability challenges concerning energy saving and environment protection are enormous (Dovì et al., 2009, Diedrich et al., 2011, Van Vuuren et al., 2012, Allouhi et al., 2015) and will require major changes, not only in the way that energy is supplied but in the way that it is consumed. On the other hand, the close relationship between energy and economic development gives rise to the necessity of a good understanding and a continuous monitoring of energy consumption (Asafu-Adjaye, 2000, Lee, 2005, Shahbaz et al., 2013), something that cannot be achieved without its quantification and categorization by sector and end-use. Even if great efforts are undertaken by many organizations to supply sufficient information of energy consumption worldwide, the clear screen related to this target cannot be drawn without a global cooperation between nations, international organizations and agencies. A special focus should be given to the characteristics of the building sector due to its significant amount of the energy consumption and the associated CO₂ emissions (Lukas and Ugursal, 2009, Santoyo-Castelazo and Azapagic, 2014, Mattinen et al., 2014).

In a previous interesting work, Lombard et al. (2008) presented an analysis, based on available information relative to 2004 period, about energy use in residential and commercial buildings with a detailed breakdown and special focus on HVAC systems. In the regard of obtaining more recent data on this topic, the present study aims at surrounding energy consumption in the building sector by giving updated information of energy indicators. Many countries are considered as references according to the illegibility of official data. Furthermore, resulting strategies and measures adopted by the reviewed countries along with their successful achievements are discussed. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: After presenting briefly the methodology adopted in the current study in Section 2, we describe the world evolution of energy use in Section 3. Zooms in on the energy consumption relative to the building sector via a multi-angle analysis covering the general impacting factors are discussed in Section 4. Founded on the feedback of the early adopters, Sections 5 discusses the critical aspects of energy efficiency policies as a powerful method to reduce energy consumption in buildings and the resulting CO₂ emissions.