Effect of different factors on the electricity consumption and electricity usage intensity (EUI) of residential buildings in Pakistan

Abstract

Buildings consume one-third of final energy consumption in the world and are graded as the largest sources of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Buildings energy consumption is driven by numerous factors that have direct or indirect effects on it. Identification of such factors could help building designers and architectures in introducing energy efficient designs of various types of buildings. Such studies are indispensable for countries such as Pakistan where a very limited research has been published in this area. This study attempts to fill this knowledge gap by investigating the effect of numerous factors on the residential electricity consumption and further, aims to establish an electricity usage intensity (EUI) value for the residential sector of Pakistan. Data were collected from 523 dwellings through site surveys and interviews with residents. Effect of 48 different variables, (five socioeconomic variables, 14 dwelling variables, 22 variables from electric appliances details, five demographic variables and two variables from renewable energy sources) was investigated on the residential buildings annual electricity consumption using SPSS software. It was found that 17 out of 48 variables have significant linear relationship with annual electricity consumption. Further, through a multivariate analysis, it was found that annual electricity usage intensity (EUI) for Pakistan’s residential buildings is 24kWh/m2. Finally, this EUI value is compared with the same of two major South Asian countries. It is observed that mean EUI of Pakistan is almost similar to that of India, i.e. 24kWh/m2 whereas Bangladesh has a higher value of mean EUI, i.e. 32kWh/m2.