World residential sector energy consumption: can implementing energy efficient designs save energy?

This thesis has investigated if building energy efficient dwellings in the residential sector will be sufficient to allow an absolute reduction in the world residential sector energy consumption in the future. A simulation model using Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet was used to simulate and predict the future energy consumption in residential sector for the world in the 90 years until 2100 and to distinguish the energy savings potential by building energy efficient dwellings. As the 90 years period is a relatively long time frame, several scenarios regarding dwelling growth rates are considered. The primary driver of the total number of dwellings in the world is the increasing world population. Other factors considered included a declining occupancy rate around the world as fewer people live in a single dwelling and an increasing house size as income increases. The differing energy consumption patterns between developed countries and developing countries was taken into account in terms of operating energy as was the fact that energy efficient dwellings tend to use more energy during construction (initial embodied energy) and in maintaining (recurring embodied energy) the dwellings during their life cycle. The model results showed that the world could finally see a savings that is an absolute reduction, in the total residential sector energy consumption in 2100 against the current (2010) consumption under these very stringent conditions: a very low rate of growth of dwellings at 0.5% p.a., an extremely high rate of new built dwellings being built as energy efficient dwellings i.e. 91% p.a. or higher, 1.2% p.a. or a higher percentage of existing dwellings being retrofitted as energy efficient dwellings throughout the world and the classification for the energy efficient dwellings must give savings of over 80% compared to conventional dwellings. Such conditions are thought, highly improbable, however, to be achieved on a world scale