City, Neighborhood & Household Level Factors in Residential Energy Use

This book comprises of review of carefully selected 34 year¿s literature (from 1981-2015) to identify a comprehensive list of factors responsible for energy use in residential building at three levels namely city, neighborhood and household and further in four categories namely environmental, physical, socioeconomic and appliance. A total of 147 factors is found responsible from various studies and are listed along with their positive, negative, mixed or no significance for energy use apart from Urban Heat Island effect. The significance identified is analyzed for study conditions such as geographic study area, level of factors, source of data, sample size, analysis method and energy processes. It is found that none of the household level energy use related studies consider the effect of the city and neighborhood level factors for analyzing energy use and hence may recommend ineffective results. Hence a comprehensive list is developed by a screening of the identified factors which must be used in all future energy use researches.