Future hotter summer greatly increases residential electricity consumption in Beijing: A study based on different house layouts and shared socioeconomic pathways

Abstract

Emerging studies illustrated that climate change has great impacts on residential electricity consumption, but only a few studies focused on impacts of daily weather and extreme hot days, not to mention considering house layouts. Here, we establish U-shaped response functions between daily outdoor air average temperature and residential electricity intensity (electricity consumption per unit house construction area), based on four house layouts; then we examine how climate change challenges residential electricity consumption in Beijing during the non-heating period under four shared socioeconomic pathways. Small houses are characterized with higher residential electricity intensity, while large houses present stronger marginal effects at high temperature. With present population, housing vacancy rate and house traits, climate change will increase 5%∼7% of residential electricity consumption in near future (2021–2050) and up to 29% in far future (2051–2100) during the non-heating period. Three hot summer months (June, July and August) contribute to more than 1/2 of total consumption and 76∼84% of the increase in future due to more hot days (≥ 20 °C). Residential electricity consumption in Beijing was much lower under the low-warming scenario of SSP1–2.6 than other scenarios, as well as the grid system pressure at peak consumption. Our findings also highlighted the awareness of huge challenges to vulnerable groups, considering climate change, higher electricity price and aging society in future.