Accounting for electricity consumption in buildings and evaluating the saving potential: what have we achieved and how much more can we save

Bogdan Atanasiu and Paolo Bertoldi, European Commission DG-JRC, Ispra, Italy
Silvia Rezessy, Central European University, Hungary
Anibal de Almeida, University of Coimbra, Portugal

Keywords

buildings, electricity, residential, tertiary, consumption, savings, European Union

Abstract

Electricity consumption in the EU-25 Member States, Candidate and Accession countries has continued to grow in the last years despite numerous energy efficiency polices and programmes at EU and national level. Total electricity consumption in the residential sector in the EU-25 has grown by 10.8 % in the period 1999-2004, at almost the same rate as the economy (GDP). Similar trends are also observed in the tertiary sector and to a lesser extend in industry. The electricity consumption in the tertiary sector has grown by 15.6 % in the period 1999-2004 and by 2.0 % in the period 2003-2004. For the tertiary sector there is even much less data available for individual electricity end-uses than for the residential sector, and only a few sources or countries attempted to split the total electricity consumption among the different end-uses. Despite this increase and the consequent impact on CO2 emissions, there is little knowledge at European level, where the electricity is uses, what is the status of efficiency of the installed and sold equipment and what is the likely impact of the planned policies. This paper summarises the result of a 2006 in-depth survey on the electricity consumption in buildings in the enlarged EU and Candidate Countries, together with the present market share of efficient appliances and equipment. The survey is based on interviews with experts, market research, and evaluation of end-use monitoring campaigns, including the REMODECE and EL-TERTIARY Projects. The aim of the paper is to show the present status of electricity consumption for the main appliances and equipment, and on the base of the best available data estimate the saving potential for electricity in buildings in New Member States and Candidate Countries.