Impacts of climate change, population growth, and power sector decarbonization on urban building energy use

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 14; no. 1; p. 6434
• Main Authors: Wang, Chenghao, Song, Jiyun, Shi, Dachuan, Reyna, Janet L., Horsey, Henry, Feron, Sarah, Zhou, Yuyu, Ouyang, Zutao, Li, Ying, Jackson, Robert B.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 18.10.2023; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 639/4077/2790; 704/106/694/2739; 704/844/4066; 706/689/2789; buildings; carbon and energy; Cities; Climate change; climate-change impacts; Decarbonization; Decision analysis; Decision making; Electric industries; Electric power; Electric power generation; Electricity distribution; energy and society; ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION; Energy consumption; energy modelling; ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY; Environmental impact; future weather; Heterogeneity; Humanities and Social Sciences; multidisciplinary; Population dynamics; Population growth; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); urban; Urban areas; United States > US
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-41458-5

Climate, technologies, and socio-economic changes will influence future building energy use in cities. However, current low-resolution regional and state-level analyses are insufficient to reliably assist city-level decision-making. Here we estimate mid-century hourly building energy consumption in 277 U.S. urban areas using a bottom-up approach. The projected future climate change results in heterogeneous changes in energy use intensity (EUI) among urban areas, particularly under higher warming scenarios, with on average 10.1–37.7% increases in the frequency of peak building electricity EUI but over 110% increases in some cities. For each 1 °C of warming, the mean city-scale space-conditioning EUI experiences an average increase/decrease of ~14%/ ~ 10% for space cooling/heating. Heterogeneous city-scale building source energy use changes are primarily driven by population and power sector changes, on average ranging from –9% to 40% with consistent south–north gradients under different scenarios. Across the scenarios considered here, the changes in city-scale building source energy use, when averaged over all urban areas, are as follows: –2.5% to –2.0% due to climate change, 7.3% to 52.2% due to population growth, and –17.1% to –8.9% due to power sector decarbonization. Our findings underscore the necessity of considering intercity heterogeneity when developing sustainable and resilient urban energy systems. This study quantifies mid-21st century hourly building energy use in 277 urban areas in the USA, revealing spatially and temporally heterogeneous changes influenced by future climate, population dynamics, and electric power sector decarbonization.