Implications of the Hidden Spatiotemporal Vulnerability of US Building Energy Demand to Climate Change

Abstract:

Energy consumption in US buildings, accounting for 41% of primary energy consumption in 2010, is particularly vulnerable to climate change due to the direct relationship between space heating/cooling and outside temperature. Past assessments of climate change impacts on building energy consumption have neglected spatial variations in the “balance point” temperature and the extremes at smaller spatiotemporal scales, making the implications of local-scale vulnerability incomplete. Here we develop state-specific empirical relationships between building energy consumption and temperature to explore the vulnerability of building energy supply and demand under climate change. We find increases in summertime electricity demand exceeding 20% and decreases in wintertime non-electric energy demand of more than 30% in some states by the end of the century. When examined annually at the national scale, these extremes are hidden by numerical cancellation. The financial implications vary spatially with increases in total net building energy expenditures in some states (as much as $3 billion/year) while in others, costs decline (as much as $1 billion/year). Integrated across the contiguous US, these variations result in a net savings of roughly $1.4 billion/year. However, this must be weighed against the cost of adding electricity generation capacity ranging from $13.9 billion/year to $52.2 billion/year in order to maintain the electricity grid’s reliability in summer. These results have wide implications for climate policy, the social cost of carbon and energy supply planning. It also demonstrates the importance of representing the climate change impacts on energy consumption at scales relevant to human decisions and actions.Energy consumption in US buildings, accounting for 41% of primary energy consumption in 2010, is particularly vulnerable to climate change due to the direct relationship between space heating/cooling and outside temperature. Past assessments of climate change impacts on building energy consumption have neglected spatial variations in the “balance point” temperature and the extremes at smaller spatiotemporal scales, making the implications of local-scale vulnerability incomplete. Here we develop state-specific empirical relationships between building energy consumption and temperature to explore the vulnerability of building energy supply and demand under climate change. We find increases in summertime electricity demand exceeding 20% and decreases in wintertime non-electric energy demand of more than 30% in some states by the end of the century. When examined annually at the national scale, these extremes are hidden by numerical cancellation. The financial implications vary spatially with increases in total net building energy expenditures in some states (as much as $3 billion/year) while in others, costs decline (as much as $1 billion/year). Integrated across the contiguous US, these variations result in a net savings of roughly $1.4 billion/year. However, this must be weighed against the cost of adding electricity generation capacity ranging from $13.9 billion/year to $52.2 billion/year in order to maintain the electricity grid’s reliability in summer. These results have wide implications for climate policy, the social cost of carbon and energy supply planning. It also demonstrates the importance of representing the climate change impacts on energy consumption at scales relevant to human decisions and actions.