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

Chenghao Wang; Jiyun Song; Dachuan Shi; Janet L Reyna; Henry Horsey; Sarah Feron; Yuyu Zhou; Zutao Ouyang; Ying Li; Robert B Jackson

doi:10.1038/s41467-023-41458-5

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

Nat Commun. 2023 Oct 18;14(1):6434. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-41458-5.

Authors

Chenghao Wang^{1

2

3}, Jiyun Song^{4

5

6}, Dachuan Shi⁴, Janet L Reyna⁷, Henry Horsey⁷, Sarah Feron^{8

9}, Yuyu Zhou^{5

10}, Zutao Ouyang¹¹, Ying Li^{12

13}, Robert B Jackson^{11

14

15}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. chenghao.wang@ou.edu.
² School of Meteorology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA. chenghao.wang@ou.edu.
³ Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA. chenghao.wang@ou.edu.
⁴ Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong SAR, China.
⁵ Department of Geography, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong SAR, China.
⁶ State Key Laboratory of Water Resources Engineering and Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.
⁷ National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO, USA.
⁸ Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
⁹ University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
¹⁰ Institute for Climate and Carbon Neutrality, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong SAR, China.
¹¹ Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
¹² Engineering Research Center of Eco-environment in Three Gorges Reservoir Region, Yichang, China.
¹³ College of Hydraulic and Environmental Engineering, China Three Gorges University, Yichang, China.
¹⁴ Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
¹⁵ Precourt Institute for Energy, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.

Abstract

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.