Household Behavior and Why Energy Efficient Buildings are not enough

This paper is a first step towards creating a model for analysis of household activities and is part
of an ongoing project on household behavior in passive houses. This model will be further
developed and the results are so far tentative. The material is based on households in passive
houses but should apply equally well to any building, whether of low energy or conventional
design.
Understanding and changing household energy consumption behavior are
considered as effective ways to improve energy efficiency and promote energy conservation.
With the increasing penetration of conventional and emerging information and communication
technologies (ICTs) in energy sector, traditional energy systems are being digitized. The energy
big data provides a new way to analyze and understand individuals‫ ׳‬energy consumption
behavior, and thus to improve energy efficiency and promote energy conservation. We first
propose a framework of the interdisciplinary research of energy, social and information science,
which includes energy social science, social informatics and energy informatics. Then, different
dimensions and different research paradigms of household energy consumption behavior are
presented. Household energy consumption behavior can be analyzed in time dimension, user
dimension and spatial dimension. The economic paradigm (including demand response) and the
behavior-oriented paradigm (including intervention strategies) are two major research streams
of household energy consumption behavior.
Low energy buildings are buildings that exhibit energy intensities below 15 ekWh/ft².yr (580
MJ/m².yr) in heating dominated climates. Such an energy intensity is approximately 50% below
the typical energy intensity of existing commercial buildings.
One type of low energy building is the passive house.
Passive house is a voluntary standard for energy efficiency in a building, which reduces the
building's ecological footprint. It results in ultra-low energy buildings that require little energy
for space heating or cooling.
Passive House building uses 90% less energy than a conventional building.
FACTORS AFFECTING AMOUNT OF ENERGY IN HOUSEHOLD USES:
A number of factors affect the amount of energy an individual household uses, including:
 Geographic location and climate
 Type of home and its physical characteristics
 Number, type, and efficiency of energy-consuming devices in the home and the amount
of time they are used
  Number of household members
Energy use per household has declined
The typical U.S. household now uses more air conditioning, appliances, and consumer
electronics than ever before. However, average annual site energy use per home has declined.
The reasons for this decline include:

 Improvements in building insulation and materials

 Improved efficiencies of heating and cooling equipment, water heaters, refrigerators,
lighting, and appliances
 Population migration to regions with lower heating—and thus lower total energy—
demand
Energy consumptions in household:
Households use energy for various purposes: space and water heating, space cooling, cooking,
lighting and electrical appliances and other end-uses ( mainly covering uses of energy by
households outside the dwellings themselves).
The main use of energy by households is for heating their homes (62.8 % of final energy
consumption in the residential sector),. Electricity used for lighting and most electrical
appliances represents 14.5 % (this excludes the use of electricity for powering the main heating,
cooling or cooking systems), while the proportion used for water heating is slightly higher,
representing 15.1 %. Main cooking devices require 6.1 % of the energy used by households,
while space cooling and other end-uses cover 0.4 % and 1.0 % respectively. Heating of space
and water represents 77.9 % of the final energy consumed by households.
Energy orders:
An energy order is an analytical model created for understanding how different activities and
appliances together form routinized behavior, and what circumstances create obstacles or
possibilities for changed behavior related to energy. An energy order thus describes how
activities in projects are organized by the use of appliances.
Reducing energy consumption is usually not a priority in the households, mainly because the
household members rarely think actively about lowering energy consumption.
A number of factors affect the amount of energy an individual household uses, including.
Geographic location and climate; Type of home and its physical characteristics; Number, type,
and efficiency of energy-consuming devices in the home and the amount of time they are used.