We see that Mississippi uses about 20% more, but this is mostly driven by the increased energy requirements of a different climate zone - control for this and the difference disappears. Please, I recently came across the National Renewable Energy Laboratories Building Typology. Houses also tend to have higher thermal mass and require less air conditioning - because of their geographic location, a simple day/night average is suficient to keep most homes most of the year free from heat, with the other side of the coin being increased heating requirements during winter. Different quantities that should equal each other dont (for instance, if you divide the total energy use by the total square footage for each building type, you get a different energy use per unit area than the dashboard provides), and it seems to miscount quantities in some locations (it appears to double-count single family attached homes, for instance.) stream
Heres energy intensity for single family homes in the cold/very cold climate region: We see the biggest difference is energy for heating - houses in cold climates use twice the energy per square foot for heating than the national average for modern homes, and more than three times the average of pre-1940s homes. The four dominant end-uses, which represent in total 98% of the dwelling consumption, are, by order of magnitude, space heating (65% in 2019), water heating (14% in 2019), appliances (13%)and cooking (6% in 2019)(Figure 3). Low energy prices which do not encourage renovation work with long payback periods and lead to higher heating temperature (rebound effect). For this reason, the EU has developed a comprehensive regulatory framework based on energy efficiency measures targeting buildings (EPBD, EED, Renovation Wave Strategy). However, despite the abundance of data available, and identified explanatory factors (decreasing share of new housing, retrofit practices, heating systems of energy poor households, rebound effect)we note that it is still difficult to provide detailed explanations of the identified phenomena. 
At the EU level, buildings account for 43% of final consumption. How do different states in the same climate region use energy differently? There are large disparities between countries, even after adjustment to the same climate, ranging from 0.5 toe/dwelling in Malta to 2.3 toe/dwelling in Luxembourg. These rebound effects, or effect related to consumers tendency to consume more energy due to economic benefit from efficiency improvement. The more granular age breakdown also shows that newer housing continues to get more energy efficient - a house built in the 2010s in a cold climate requires roughly 70% less energy for heating than a pre-1960s house. If you think. This was surprising to me, since I frequently read stories about how dense urban areas are. 11 countries with a downward trend slowing down or stabilising after 2014 (among which the Netherlands, UK, France, Austria). Figure 7: Drivers of household energy consumption at EU level. These effects can be of several types, e.g., direct (increase in consumption of heating energy because of better insulated homes or more efficient heating systems), energy market related (energy consumption increases as fuel costs decreases, as it has been the case in Ireland after 2014), For example, in France 35% of the renovation works between 2014 and 2016 were over one aspect only. 
How does this compare to other countries? A further analysis of the decomposition of effects can be done by looking at the average annual effects (climate corrected for heating)for each period (Figure 8). The service also provides exclusive energy efficiency indicators by sector for the 27 EU members and Norway, Serbia, Switzerland and United Kingdom, going back to 1990. Click the link we sent to , or click here to sign in. But this is offset by higher energy intensity for things like general electricity use. This was surprising to me, since I frequently read stories about how dense urban areas are more energy efficient - I expected multifamily construction to use lower energy per square foot. For one, it lumps in a bunch of radically different housing types together (which is why average energy intensity includes both electric and natural gas heating.) Most of that extra energy comes from heating - ~65% of energy use in pre-1940s homes goes towards heating, compared to ~40% in post-1980s homes, and pre-1940s housing uses more energy per square foot for heating than post-1980 housing uses overall. A 50-year difference in house age translates to roughly a 50% reduction in energy use. We see that energy use varies widely from region to region, and that energy for heating is the main factor that affects this. Multifamily buildings taller than 3 stories make up just over 3% of US housing by floor area - your mental model of typical apartment building should be a. rather than an urban high-rise (the US actually has more square footage in mobile homes than it does in multifamily buildings taller than 3 stories). We can get a clearer view by looking at energy intensity - how much energy per unit area different types of housing use. %``
Heres energy use for homes built post 2010 for all different climate regions in the US. The overall evolution of these 3 non-behavioural effects is downwards, as they increased energy consumption on average by 2.5 Mtoe/year before 2014 and by 1.8Mtoe/year after. 
At the EU 27 level, the unit consumption for space heating has decreased from 2.1%/year over 2000-2014 to 0.6%/year since 2014. Energy surveys like the. The average energy consumption in the EU is 1.3 toe/dwelling in 2019. ResStock tells us. Most of that reduction comes from reduced energy used for heating. The average dwelling in France, for instance, uses around 56,000 Btus per square foot of residential space, fairly typical for a European country [1]. Multifamily buildings taller than 3 stories make up just over 3% of US housing by floor area - your mental model of typical apartment building should be a garden apartment rather than an urban high-rise (the US actually has more square footage in mobile homes than it does in multifamily buildings taller than 3 stories). I suspect the mechanism here is that some types of energy use dont scale linearly with home size - a 1000 square foot apartment and a 2000 square foot house, for instance, might both use similar amounts of energy for the fridge, dishwasher, microwave, washer/dryer, etc. For homes built after 1980, we see that the least energy intensive building type is actually single family homes, something the Residential Energy Consumption Survey confirms. We see that most building types use energy roughly in proportion to their fraction of overall square footage - single family homes, for instance, make up just over 80% of residential energy use, just a bit more than their total fraction of housing space. We dont seem to find much difference in energy use from across similar homes in states with different level of energy code strictness, though the data here is limited. Using this, we can get a super granular (if simulated) look at exactly where energy goes in US homes, and see which parameters affect it. First, a bit about the source. Taken together, those homes use around 11.4 quadrillion BTus of energy annually, which is a bit over 20% (as of 2014) of all the energy used in the US. ResStock takes all this into account. But energy use per square foot averaged across all US housing is kind of a weird metric. The use of low-performance back-up systems for fuel-poor households: when energy prices are high, fuel-poor households tend to swap their fuel for a directly available and free resource (wood or waste, burnt in open fireplaces with lower efficiency); or for a resource that they can pay for as they use it. Homes vary by size, age, location, materials, type of building, amount of insulation, number of windows, heating system, and dozens of other parameters, many of which are correlated with each other, all of which affect the energy use and performance of a building. Figure 4: Annual growth rate of energy consumption by end-use. English | French | Spanish | German | Russian | Japanese | Korean | Chinese, Privacy Policy - Terms & Conditions - FAQs - Sitemap. 396 0 obj
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hbbd``b`6`,@,~"x@DHB They therefore represent a major challenge for achieving the EU's climate and environmental objectives. We see a fairly uniform decrease in energy intensity with age - no matter the type, older homes use significantly more energy per square foot than newer ones, with the oldest homes using twice as much or more than the newer ones. These distributions were constructed based on correlations between the various parameters - the distribution of housing ages looks very different in the Northeast than the South, for instance, and the amount of insulation will vary depending on how old your house is. After thermal uses comes electricity for lights, appliances, computers, etc. Lets investigate the possible causes of this slowdown. Europe is even more diverse than US. To facilitate comparison, Ive tried to overlap census regions (comparing different climate zones in the same census region). Turning to age, we see a relatively wide spread across different age brackets (which makes sense, considering how slowly homes leave the building stock.) Figure 6: Trends in household energy efficiency at EU level, according to ODEX, Heating, water heating, cooking, cooling, lighting, refrigerators, freezers, washing machines, dishwashers, dryer and TVs. The advantage of this approach is to aggregate specific consumption trends initially expressed in different physical units (e.g., toe/m2 for heating, toe/household for water heating and cooking, kWh/household for lighting, kWh/appliance for appliances and cooling)to get as close as possible to the energy efficiency of each technology, through (dimensionless)variation indices. Energy surveys like the Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) tells us how energy use varies from region to region, and across different housing types, but the ResStock data lets us look at different combinations of parameters. The household energy consumption (climate corrected)decreases of about 0.7 Mtoe/year for 2000-2014 and increased of about 0.7 Mtoe/year after. endstream
Energy & Climate Modelling and Forecasting, Market, Competitive and Technology Intelligence, Nearly 30 years of successful market experience, Globally recognised experts and international teams of analysts, In-house forecasting models, databases and intelligence tools, Evolution of households energy consumption patterns across the EU. The dashboard breaks down energy use into electricity consumption, and on-site fuel consumption (burning natural gas, propane, or fuel oil.)
Household energy efficiency has improved by 29% at EU level between 2000 and 2019 (or 1.8%/year)as shown by the energy efficiency index ODEX (equal to 71 in 2019, Figure 6). You can also contact me on Twitter, LinkedIn, or by email: briancpotter@gmail.com.
No data on m2 for Belgium. Within multifamily, we see the majority of square footage is in smaller buildings - 2 to 4 unit buildings, or buildings 3 stories or less. The 2015 RECS data confirm this - the larger your house, the less energy per square foot it uses: Overall, average energy use for US homes is about 47,000 Btus per square foot per year. Within multifamily, we see the majority of square footage is in smaller buildings - 2 to 4 unit buildings, or buildings 3 stories or less. As a paid subscriber, youll help support this work and also gain access to a members-only slack channel. The dashboard breaks down energy use into electricity consumption, and on-site fuel consumption (burning natural gas, propane, or fuel oil.) In most cases this bust is in the neighborhood of +- 20%, but in some cases its much larger - manually calculated values for multifamily energy intensity are half that what the dashboard gives, for instance. The above is just for single family, but we see a roughly similar energy budget across different housing types. hb```r cb`>3sUO >q0|gZPbafee%.TUY'5V.Nf83et"M iL FGGo @0p`@ >i f=Wpu8_(iR. Heres single family use for the hot-humid climate zone (ie: the south): We see that homes in hot/humid climates use about 70% less energy for heating than homes in cold climates. Likewise, differences in energy use between the US and European houses stem from the fact that US homes are much larger than European ones. France is roughly average for both energy use and dwelling size. (called out as Electricity: Other in the graph above), at a bit over 25% of housing energy use in modern housing. Arizona, on the other hand, adopted energy codes much later (it first adopted one in 2009), and has a history of conservative governors restricting jurisdictions from implementing more stringent ones. A more granular breakdown of home electricity use can be found in the base ResStock data.). I couldnt readily find energy consumption just for recent European construction. Changes in energy consumption can be linked to several factors, such as changes in the technical progress of heating systems and associated energy efficiency gains. Construction Physics is produced in partnership with the Institute for Progress, a Washington, DC-based think tank. On behalf of all EU Energy Agencies and of the European Commission, Enerdata has created a database providing unique data on energy consumption by end-use. These posts will always remain free, but if you find this work valuable, I encourage you to become a paid subscriber. Differences in energy use come from the fact that single family homes are much larger than multifamily housing. .) The US has more than twice as much housing space in pre-1940 single family homes as it does in large apartment buildings. And its useful to look at energy breakdown for the country as a whole. Over 90% of housing space in the US consists of single family homes and low-rise apartment buildings. Finally, for space heating, the consumption has been stable since 2014, and follows a period of decline (-0.7%/year over 2000-2014). I couldnt readily find energy consumption just for recent European construction. This unit consumption has been decreasing in most countries since 2000 (-1.0%/year at EU level)(Figure 2). The downward trends of energy efficiency observed for these end-uses were not offset by the larger efficiency gains for large appliances and lighting. Mississippi doesnt have any parts in a hot-dry climate, so well look at the data for mixed humid and try to scale it accordingly. It also gives a more granular look at exactly what energy gets spent on in a home - how much is allocated to heating, to cooling, etc, as well as what type of fuel is used. California is known as being more stringent with energy codes, having first passed one way back in 1975, and typically leads the way in code strictness. - I expected multifamily construction to use lower energy per square foot. On a square-foot basis, single family homes actually use less energy than multifamily housing. Figure 1: Final energy consumption of residential buildings in the EU. This chart shows the breakdown in energy use (trillions of Btus) and energy intensity (thousands of Btus per square foot) for each building type and age bracket of residential housing. It then samples from this distribution hundreds of thousands of times, and runs each sample (some combination of housing parameters) in a physics-based building simulation to estimate home energy use. So smaller housing units use more energy per square foot despite using less energy overall. Ideally wed like to look at age within a building type (and vice versa - look at all building types within a particular age bracket). For space heating, the reduction of the unit consumption per m2 has significantly slowed down since 2014 in most of the largest EU countries, especially in Germany, France, UK and The Netherlands (Figure 5). The data comes from. ResStock tells us. Virtually no difference, once again. Multifamily buildings (duplexes, apartments, condos, etc.) For domestic hot water, consumption has also been increasing since 2000, but at a rate that has clearly accelerated since 2014 (around 1%/year)compared to 2000-2014 (almost stable). Lighting and air-conditioning each account for less than 1%. , a simulation designed to model US residential energy use at a much greater level of detail than had been done previously. This is 50%-100% more that what the equivalent house in Europe would have - many apartments are served by a single 32A/230V line (7KW). Housing in the US varies widely along a huge number of dimensions. than the US, which would skew average energy use higher even if newer homes were significantly more energy efficient than US homes. 368 0 obj <> endobj 2016, Directorate general for Internal Policies (European Parliament). Energy surveys, for instance, break down energy use by building type and by age, but if these factors are correlated (which they are), it makes it hard to know which one matters more. Hi Brian, thanks for highlighting our work! (The NREL report makes specific mention of this as something important to address, but I suspect this is mostly a self-solving problem, as these tend to drop out of the building stock much faster than conventional homes do.). <> The 2015 RECS data confirm this - the larger your house, the less energy per square foot it uses: One confounder here is that European countries often have. Residential buildings account for two thirds of this consumption and are associated with a high untapped energy savings potential. Several aspects can explain this phenomenon: Figure 7 illustrates the impact of the main drivers of household energy consumption. It includes everything from passive houses to brutalist and khrushchyovka-style blocks of flats made in the 60 and 70 out of plain concrete and no insulation, some dependent of large-scale waste heat from nearby industry. Almost all this extra energy use comes from burning fuel on-site. It's quite shocking to see that newer homes in the US use more domestic electric energy than the combined requirements for heating and hot water preparation.
This makes it difficult to understand what actually matters for improving energy efficiency. The ODEX analysis shows that energy efficiency gains in heating use have tended to decrease since 2014 (Figure 5). 49% of US residential building floor area was built prior to 1980, and more than 10% was built prior to 1940. You can learn more about their work by visiting their, [1] - Energy consumption per dwelling in Europe can be, , average size of European dwellings can be. Housing in the US varies widely along a huge number of dimensions. The trends by country for heating consumption per m2 of dwellings (Figure 5)mostly correspond to those observed for household energy consumption (Figure 4). ResStock can tell us that as well. The households ODEX is currently calculated on the basis of 11 household end-uses or appliances2. Figure 3: Household energy consumption by end-use in the EU. And the lions share of that extra energy use comes in the form of increased on-site fuel burning - natural gas, fuel oil, or propane. Looking at Energy Use in US Residential Buildings, This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Other effects come into play, such as the evolution of the built surface, energy prices, occupant behaviours, occupancy rates, etc. Between 2000 and 2019, the household consumption has decreased by 8.5 Mtoe. Ive done what I can to cross-check numbers against other data (such as RECS and census data), but we should take any conclusions with a large grain of salt. Ideally wed like to look at age within a building type (and vice versa - look at all building types within a particular age bracket), The result is an extremely fine-grained model of how energy is used across US homes. The warmer climate in 2019 further reduced consumption by 2 Mtoe. endstream endobj startxref 8 countries with a downward trend accelerating after 2014 (Spain, Italy, Poland, Luxembourg, Croatia, Sweden, Denmark, Finland). This is partially offset by increased use of energy for cooling, but on balance hot/humid housing still uses just about 60-70% of the energy per square foot that cold climate housing uses (depending on the year.). Iyr]fY&FG Iv~|7 Xl`|zzB6>a/ 3=k{H1xQ[?e Figure 5: Households heating consumption per m2 (climate corrected), *Notes: 2002 for UK, 2003 for Portugal; no data available before 2008 for Luxembourg and before 2016 for Malta. More details in the, See the Energy Efficiency Directive 2012/27/EU. This makes it difficult to understand what actually matters for improving energy efficiency. The US has more than twice as much housing space in pre-1940 single family homes as it does in large apartment buildings. So, for instance, for housing age it assumes there are X number of houses built before 1940, Y built between 1940 and 1950, and so on. Increases in housing stock and more consuming lifestyles (more appliances and larger homes)have contributed to an increase in consumption of 72.5 Mtoe. Our analysis of energy consumption trends in the building sector based on data from the Odyssee project highlights a break in the trend after 2014 linked to two phenomena: the slowdown in energy efficiency progress after 2014 and the growing importance of behavioural effects in energy consumption. As far as the simulated data is concerned, there doesnt seem to be much of an impact on different state energy codes on energy use. in proportion to their fraction of overall square footage - single family homes, for instance, make up just over 80% of residential energy use, just a bit more than their total fraction of housing space. Until the move to induction technology in the last decade, electric cookstoves tended to be rare and most people preferred gas appliances. make up another ~18% of the square footage, and the balance goes to mobile and manufactured homes. Hi Brian, thanks for highlighting our work! Efforts still need to be made to collect technical and activity data, in particular on the quality and volume of renovations in each country, as well as data on the behaviour of households (use of technical and control systems; perception of comfort; influence of energy prices on behaviour, etc.).
Re: messy data, the sample size can get low for some of the rows (you can see the sample count if you hover over each data point; anything less than 100 samples will have higher uncertainty). First, a bit about the source. How does 1940s housing in the Northeast vary from 2010s housing in the South?
So what is all that energy being used for? Well also throw into the mix Mississippi, a state with no energy code. A deep renovation is a refurbishment that reduces both the delivered and the final energy consumption of a building by a significant percentage compared with the pre-renovation levels, leading to a very high energy performance, Boosting Building Renovation: What potential and value for Europe? Multifamily buildings (duplexes, apartments, condos, etc.) From what I understand, the normal electric hookup in the US is 2x120V, 100A (24KW), there is a move to 200Amps and older homes tend to have 50 Amps lines. Homes vary by size, age, location, materials, type of building, amount of insulation, number of windows, heating system, and dozens of other parameters, many of which are correlated with each other, all of which affect the energy use and performance of a building.
Interestingly, in 2019, the share of energy consumption of appliances has almost exceeded that of water heating. What does it look like if we compare across climate regions? We see a roughly similar amount of total energy use (though older SFH do worse than older multifamily buildings), but a different breakdown. , for instance, break down energy use by building type and by age, but if these factors are correlated (which they are), it makes it hard to know which one matters more. 0 One method would be to compare similar houses built in similar climates in two different states that have different levels of energy code strictness. The ResStock data in the dashboard is somewhat messy, and care should be taken interpreting it. Multifamily buildings use less natural gas/fuel oil heating and more electric heating, and have lower heating requirements overall (on average, they use about 30% less energy per square foot than single family homes for heating.) So lets take a look and see what we find. Lets start with a high-level look at US housing. It then further subdivides it into energy for heating, cooling, water heating, vents/fans, and other. Classical, resistive tumble driers are almost unheard of and unavailable for purchase. Looking just for the moment at single family homes, we see that energy use varies greatly depending on home age: older homes use much more energy for heating than newer homes do: Pre-1940s housing uses twice the energy per square foot as post-1980 housing. they constructed a series of probability distributions for different housing parameters in the US. Other than mobile homes, we dont see a huge amount of variation in energy intensity between different types of housing (single family, multifamily, etc.) Well compare Arizona and California, two states that each have portions in the hot dry climate zone. But energy code strictness might matter less in a hot/dry climate. It then further subdivides it into energy for heating, cooling, water heating, vents/fans, and other. For homes built after 1980, we see that the least energy intensive building type is actually single family homes, something the, . Using a variety of data sources (census data, builders surveys, energy consumption surveys, etc.)