Abstract
Urban residential buildings make large contributions to energy consumption. Energy consumption per square meter is most widely used to measure energy efficiency in urban residential buildings. This study aims to explore whether it is an appropriate indicator. An extended STIRPAT model was used based on the survey data from 867 households. Here we present that building area per household has a dilution effect on energy consumption per square meter. Neglecting this dilution effect leads to a significant overestimation of the effectiveness of building energy savings standards. Further analysis suggests that the peak of energy consumption per square meter in China’s urban residential buildings occurred in 2012 when accounting for the dilution effect, which is 11 years later than it would have occurred without considering the dilution effect. Overall, overlooking the dilution effect may lead to misleading judgments of crucial energy-saving policy tools, as well as the ongoing trend of residential energy consumption in China.
Highlights
Urban residential buildings make large contributions to energy consumption
To date, little or no attention has been placed on the rationality of using urban residential building energy consumption (URBEC) per square meter to measure the change in building energy consumption performance
The URBEC per square meter will decline as the building area per household increases
Summary
Urban residential buildings make large contributions to energy consumption. Energy consumption per square meter is most widely used to measure energy efficiency in urban residential buildings. The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) evaluates the energy conservation achievements of the building sector in global regions (including China) with the indicator kilojoules per square meter. These studies, reports, and standards play important roles in facilitating government policy-making and efforts to upgrade building performance, which directly affect the progress of energy conservation and environmental protection. To date, little or no attention has been placed on the rationality of using URBEC per square meter to measure the change in building energy consumption performance
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