No abstract

This study investigated the interrelationships among household energy consumption and indirect lifestyle aspects (including life schedule and family pattern), with particular emphasis placed on energy consumption pattern changes according to climatic characteristics. Instead of the conventional questionnaire survey and on-site measurement methods, this study focused on estimating the lifestyle related household energy consumption using life schedule data, which, in contrast, is low cost and time efficient. This study found that household energy consumption increases according to family size, however the per person energy consumption rate is less in larger size families. Retirees and housewives generally consume more household energy than working and student groups. Among working groups, household energy consumption increases according to age. Employee groups tend to consume less household energy than businessmen/women groups, while female working groups consume more household energy than male working groups. Also, people engaged in the agriculture/forestry sector and the self-employed consume more household energy, while labor and management/technical sectors consume the least. This study also revealed that households in colder regions generally consume more household energy due to higher energy needs for heating and lighting.

No abstract

Summer Time is a convention in which clocks are uniformly set one hour or more ahead of standard time to provide more daylight in the evenings during late spring, summer, and early fall.

One of the major constraints of developing countries in controlling carbon dioxide emissions is the limited availability of an emission database. Since there is no city level emission database in Malaysia, the authors have made the first attempt in the country to establish city level carbon dioxide emission data for different sizes of city using the System Dynamics based FML Model. From the results, it was found that the carbon dioxide emission of a city has a positive correlation with population size and GDP value, and an increasing emission trend is taking place in Malaysia regardless of the size of city. Projections of emission trends up to 2050 showed that if no aggressive actions were taken to cap emissions from the cities, there would be an extreme increase of emissions by as much as more than seven times of the current level. Hence, the authors have proposed three alternative approaches to set a city level carbon budget, i.e. equal share, population and GDP approaches. The study also demonstrated the capability of the present model in estimating present and future city level carbon dioxide emissions. The model can be used for establishment of a city level carbon dioxide emission database for the whole of Malaysia and in future may be applied to other developing countries.