EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Increased house size can cancel out the effect of improved insulation on overall heating energy requirements

Helen Viggers, Michael Keall, Kristin Wickens and Philippa Howden-Chapman

Energy Policy, 2017, vol. 107, issue C, 248-257

Abstract: Stand-alone single-family dwellings are the dominant housing type in several countries. The floor-area of the average stand-alone dwelling has been increasing faster than the floor-area of the average apartment/flat/row-house in England, Australia, Canada, the USA and New Zealand. Standalone dwellings have a greater external heat transfer area than multiple family dwellings, for the same floor-area. Larger dwellings require more energy to heat than smaller dwellings insulated to the same level. Although insulation requirements have been increasing, the heating required to maintain newer larger stand-alone dwellings to a constant temperature can be similar to that required to heat older smaller stand-alone dwellings. Building regulations should be future-proofed by considering trends in dwelling size.

Keywords: Heating; Unintended consequences; Insulation; Dwelling size; Policy implications (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421517302707
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:107:y:2017:i:c:p:248-257

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2017.04.045

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:107:y:2017:i:c:p:248-257