Abstract
Annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from residential energy use in the United States peaked in 2005 at 1.26 Gt CO2-eq yr−1, and have since decreased at an average annual rate of 2% yr−1 to 0.96 Gt CO2-eq yr−1 in 2019. In this article we decompose changes in US residential energy supply and GHG emissions over the period 1990–2015 into relevant drivers for four end-use categories. The chosen drivers encompass changing demographics, housing characteristics, energy end-use intensities, and generation efficiency and GHG intensity of electricity. Reductions in household size, growth in heated floor area per house, and increased access to space cooling are the main drivers of increases in energy and GHG emissions after population growth. Growing shares of newer homes, and reductions in intensity of energy use per capita, household, or floor area have produced moderate primary energy and GHG emission reductions, but improved generation efficiency and decarbonization of electricity supply have brought about far bigger primary energy and GHG emission reductions. Continued decline of residential emissions from electrification of residential energy and decarbonization of electricity supply can be expected, but not fast enough to limit climate change to 1.5 °C warming. US residential final energy demand will therefore need to decline in absolute terms to meet such a target. However, without changes in the age distribution, type mix, or average size of housing, improvements in energy efficiency are unlikely to outweigh growth in the number of households from population growth and further household size reductions.
Highlights
Residential buildings make a substantial contribution to global primary energy demand and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and may be one of the easiest energy demand sectors to decarbonize (Lucon et al 2014)
We summarize a selection of index decomposition analysis (IDA) studies of residential energy or GHG by location, the outcome metric being decomposed, the activity variable, and the main drivers identified by each study
We use an additive log mean division index (LMDI)-I multilevel-parallel IDA model (Ang and Zhang 2000) to decompose changes in final energy, primary energy, and GHG emissions associated with four residential energy end-uses; space heating, space cooling, domestic hot water, and all other end-uses
Summary
Residential buildings make a substantial contribution to global primary energy demand and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and may be one of the easiest energy demand sectors to decarbonize (Lucon et al 2014). To reduce GHG emissions from buildings, ‘electrify everything’ summarizes a strategy of electrification of energy services and simultaneous decarbonizing of electricity generation (Mai et al 2018, Miller 2018). Since peaking at 1.26 Gt CO2-eq yr−1 in 2005, residential GHG emissions have decreased at an average annual rate of around −2% yr−1–0.96 Gt CO2-eq yr−1 in 2019, with further reductions expected in 2020 (EIA 2020b). We use index decomposition analysis (IDA) to decompose changes in US residential final energy, primary energy, and GHG emissions into drivers covering demographics, housing characteristics, and the energy and GHG intensity of energy demand and supply. It is the first analysis to decompose U.S residential energy and emissions at the end-use level, and the first to consider changes in household size, housing age cohort distribution and fuel switching as drivers.
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