Implications of declining household sizes and expectations of home comfort for domestic energy demand
Katherine Ellsworth-Krebs ()
Additional contact information
Katherine Ellsworth-Krebs: The LICA Building, Lancaster University
Nature Energy, 2020, vol. 5, issue 1, 20-25
Abstract:
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.
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-019-0512-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
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:nat:natene:v:5:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41560-019-0512-1
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nenergy/
DOI: 10.1038/s41560-019-0512-1
Access Statistics for this article
Nature Energy is currently edited by Fouad Khan
More articles in Nature Energy from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().