Global comparison of building energy use data within the context of climate change

Abstract

Building plays an important role in addressing climate change, with many studies on these topics having been conducted from a global perspective. However, building energy use is found to differ greatly among different countries, with the gaps yet to be fully considered or discussed. Thus, a picture of the overall situation in each country may be needed as a basis for global studies, and one of the first few steps to this end is to conduct a comparative study on energy use data. With these considerations, data related to building energy use are collected in this study from various resources. The energy use intensity, energy structure, and carbon emissions in different countries are compared using selected indicators and different projections were fitted presenting different development patterns. A new clustering of these countries is then proposed. Through the analysis, it could be found that countries with different phases of building energy development needs different patterns and the phase of each country based on global comparison could be some support for building energy policy and researches. Meanwhile, some suggestions on building energy data are discussed for a better understanding and evaluation of building energy use to better address climate change.