IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natene/v5y2020i1d10.1038_s41560-019-0512-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Implications of declining household sizes and expectations of home comfort for domestic energy demand

Author

Listed:
  • Katherine Ellsworth-Krebs

    (The LICA Building, Lancaster University)

Abstract

Techno-economic approaches largely avoid delineating necessary energy uses or questioning how excessive lifestyle expectations may curtail attempts to achieve ambitious climate change targets. In this Perspective, I present data suggesting a general trend of increasing domestic floor area per capita globally and argue that this ought to be a key focus in future energy research, considering that house size is the largest determinant of domestic energy consumption. Particular attention should be directed at the confluence of factors that influence floor area per capita and questions of lifestyle expectations, energy sufficiency and invisible energy policies that have enabled the rise in floor area per capita both deliberately and inadvertently. Overall, this elucidates why energy research must consider lifestyle expectations and demographic trends that are generally seen as outside the remit of energy policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Katherine Ellsworth-Krebs, 2020. "Implications of declining household sizes and expectations of home comfort for domestic energy demand," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 5(1), pages 20-25, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:natene:v:5:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41560-019-0512-1
    DOI: 10.1038/s41560-019-0512-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-019-0512-1
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41560-019-0512-1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rempel, A.R. & Rempel, A.W. & McComas, S.M. & Duffey, S. & Enright, C. & Mishra, S., 2021. "Magnitude and distribution of the untapped solar space-heating resource in U.S. climates," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    2. Zhang, Yimeng & Wang, Feng & Zhang, Bing, 2023. "The impacts of household structure transitions on household carbon emissions in China," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    3. Daioglou, Vassilis & Mikropoulos, Efstratios & Gernaat, David & van Vuuren, Detlef P., 2022. "Efficiency improvement and technology choice for energy and emission reductions of the residential sector," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 243(C).
    4. Pérez-Sánchez, Laura À. & Velasco-Fernández, Raúl & Giampietro, Mario, 2022. "Factors and actions for the sustainability of the residential sector. The nexus of energy, materials, space, and time use," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    5. Okushima, Shinichiro, 2024. "Measuring energy sufficiency: A state of being neither in energy poverty nor energy extravagance," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 354(PA).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natene:v:5:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41560-019-0512-1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.