Modelling the Energy Consumption of Buildings

This chapter looks at different models and approaches concerning the energy consumption of households and buildings. The modelling of building energy consumption falls completely within this context. The field of building energy consumption modelling is therefore vast, diverse and involves many disciplines spanning the social sciences, engineering, physics, economics and ecology, to name just a few. The statistical approach attempts to establish a causal relationship between the energy consumption of buildings, users and different contextual variables, such as climatic conditions or urban density. The co-construction of new concepts and methods integrating causality into numerical modelling, to theorise, simplify and experiment with models of building energy consumption is a field that is more necessary than ever, but which is still largely open. The development of these constructive measures generally relies on models integrating variables related to materials, orientations and sometimes the life cycle of buildings.