The role of building characteristics, demographics, and urban heat islands in shaping residential energy use

Antonopoulos, Chrissi; Trusty, Alec; Shandas, Vivek

doi:10.1016/j.cacint.2020.100021

Cited by 17 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…Overall, the socioeconomic and demographic findings presented here build upon and support findings in numerous empirical studies, such as [1,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]51]. Such studies highlight the many ways that individual heterogeneity in socio-demographics and behavioral choice accounts for significant variation between predicted and actual energy use in buildings, and participation in energy efficiency programs.…”

Section: Policy Implications and Recommendationssupporting

confidence: 76%

“…Some researchers point to the intention-behavior gap as a driving force behind lack of energy efficiency program participation, whereby stark differences exist between what individuals intend to do and actually do [10][11][12][13][14]; others argue that the technical and cost-saving potential for efficient buildings exists but that intervening economic factors such as information asymmetries, heterogeneous risk tolerance thresholds among individuals, and inaccurate personal discount rates lead to lack of participation in such cost-savings potential [3,4,6,[15][16][17]. Thus, many researchers are turning to socioeconomic and demographic factors as drivers of energy efficiency decisions to complement the field's knowledge of physical building characteristics that influence energy consumption [1,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]; the present study builds upon this large and growing body of research.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Understanding the Drivers of National-Level Energy Audit Behavior: Demographics and Socioeconomic Characteristics

Hewitt

Wang

2020

Sustainability

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The energy audit-an assessment of a home's energy systems performed by a trained auditor in order to provide the resident with strategies for saving energy and money-is provided by many utility companies throughout the United States for free or at a reduced cost. The uptake of such programs is generally low, and little is known about audit participants. Importantly, as more evidence points to the need to look beyond physical building characteristics to increase energy efficiency, this work explores if specific characteristics of the individual are correlated with increased participation in audit programs. This research analyzes the most recent (2015) national level Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) data through a binary logit regression to determine what socioeconomic and demographic factors, if any, are statistically significant in linking to the decision to undertake an audit, while controlling for physical building characteristics. The findings indicate that age has a significant and positive relationship with the decision to undertake an audit, as does being non-white, while renting has a significant and negative relationship. Knowledge about national-level participation in audit programs can help policy makers craft more strategic incentives to increase participation and, ultimately, help connect the audit decision to the more important next step of retrofits and upgrades to save energy.

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Section: Policy Implications and Recommendationssupporting

confidence: 76%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the Drivers of National-Level Energy Audit Behavior: Demographics and Socioeconomic Characteristics

Hewitt

Wang

2020

Sustainability

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“…Table 1), as the median EUIs in the United States could vary from 2.3 kBtu/ft 2 (drinking water treatment and distribution utility) to 402.7 kBtu/ft 2 (fast food restaurant) (Energy Star, 2022). It is also evident that the disparity of EUIs of the same building type could be caused by income, temperature, and race (Antonopoulos et al., 2019; Tong et al., 2021).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, temperature was found to be less critical for building an EUI estimation (Pan & Zhang, 2020). Microclimate variation/urban heat islands, which could significantly increase the temperature difference across the region at certain times compared to the regional annual temperature difference, were found to have a further impact on building EU (Antonopoulos et al., 2019; Evins et al., 2020; Hong et al., 2021).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scaling in urban building energy use and its influencing factors

Wang

Jiang

et al. 2023

J of Industrial Ecology

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Several studies have reported scaling relationships for energy consumption with respect to city size and other indicators. However, such scaling relationships have rarely been reported at the suburban level. This study explored the scaling relationships between energy use (EU) and building size (gross floor area [GFA]) at the building level in 16 urban regions in the United States from 2011 to 2019. We found that the scaling exponents of most of the examined regions changed from either super‐linear or sub‐linear to linear (β = 1) over the years. The scaling exponents of some cities (e.g., New York City) fluctuated around 1. These scaling exponents are negatively correlated with regional climate. This study reports that the scaling relationships between energy consumption and GFA at the building level in heterogeneous cities are evolving toward linear scaling. This study also found that different building types and building energy structures significantly impact building energy consumption. Hotels in New York City had the highest scaling exponent (β = 1.02), and strong correlations were observed between the scaling exponents and the share of electricity in building EU. These insights reveal the common nature of the relationships between building EU and GFA and the intersections between scaling exponents and building attributes. Our study highlights the importance of energy efficiency management in hotels and electricity‐dominated buildings.

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“…Graham (2015) draws attention to the deleterious influence of UHIs on local and global climatic conditions, noting that ‘as well as ameliorating cold winters, UHIs can dramatically accentuate the lethal effects of hot summers within a context of a warming planetary climate’ (p. 197). UHIs have also been shown to impact energy use (Antonopoulos et al, 2019), with ‘cool roofs, cool pavements, and urban vegetation’ (Akbari and Kolokotsa, 2016: 834) being proposed as some of the main mitigating measures. More extreme responses to the phenomenon – and global heating more generally – include the establishment of technologically controlled environments, aimed at creating ‘specialist forms of microclimatic enclosure that are explicitly designed to transcend the emerging limitations and increasing turbulence’ (Marvin and Rutherford, 2018: 1143) of contemporary social life.…”

Section: Nexus Technologies: Tracing the Connections Among Energy And...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Injustices at the air–energy nexus

Bouzarovski

Robinson

2022

Environment and Planning F

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This article maps the socio-technical interconnections between atmospheric systems, on the one hand, and the infrastructural networks associated with the extraction, production, transport and consumption of energy resources, on the other hand. The exchanges, interdependencies and injustices that arise at this interface can broadly be understood as the ‘air–energy nexus’. Despite energy inequalities almost always being entangled with some form of atmospheric injustice, their intersection has rarely been articulated to date. With the aid of a critical literature review, we focus on the domestic air–energy nexus to explore the ability of air to act as a social and physical agent of deprivation and injustice in the case of energy vulnerability: a condition characterized by a household’s propensity to secure adequate levels of energy services in the home. We argue that an integrated and critical perspective on the air–energy nexus challenges existing understandings of the quality and nature of domestic energy and atmospheric services, such as space heating and cooling. We propose future research and policy directions focused on addressing energy vulnerability in the home by embracing the unruly and fluid character of air–energy interactions, and transcending the socio-material boundaries between indoor and outdoor environments.

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The role of building characteristics, demographics, and urban heat islands in shaping residential energy use

Cited by 17 publications

References 55 publications

Understanding the Drivers of National-Level Energy Audit Behavior: Demographics and Socioeconomic Characteristics

Understanding the Drivers of National-Level Energy Audit Behavior: Demographics and Socioeconomic Characteristics

Scaling in urban building energy use and its influencing factors

Injustices at the air–energy nexus

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