Non-transport household energy consumption in Adelaide and Melbourne

Abstract

The residential sector is the third largest sector of final energy use in Australian urban areas, accounting for about 12% of the country's total final energy consumption. What are the main determinants of energy consumption in the residential sector? This paper sheds light on this question by examining non-transport summer household energy consumption in Adelaide and Melbourne. Data were collected from a survey of 200 sample households and modelled according to a conceptual framework that not only emphasises household characteristics and housing stock characteristics but also controls the macro-environment factors. The findings reveal distinctive results in Adelaide and Melbourne. In Adelaide, household characteristics are the most important contributors in explaining non-transport household energy consumption. In Melbourne, the household characteristic as represented by income is important, but housing stock characteristics provide even more explanatory power. These findings contribute to the understanding of the factors that shape residential energy consumption and have policy implications in targeting household energy savings.

Keywords:

• energy consumption
• household characteristics
• housing stock characteristics
• energy saving policies

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a research grant [Grant Number: 11/NTRR-10] from the University of South Australia and a Discovery Grant from the Australian Research Council [ARC DP 1094801]. The authors thank the anonymous referees for their helpful comments. Irene Canmon Han helped proofread the manuscript. As usual, all remaining errors are the authors'.

Notes

1. Other factors, such as dwelling tenure, household composition, and location, also influenced energy consumption.

2. The national average can be calculated using the per capita energy consumption times the national average household size. In 2009–2010, the energy consumption per capita was 46 GJ, which included 45% petrol, 21% electricity, and 14% gas (ABS 2012a). By using an average household size of 2.5, the household energy consumption for three months could be derived as 10 GJ.

3. Forty megajoule was probably an outlier in the Melbourne data. The next minimum value was 171 MJ, followed by 703 MJ.

4. Dwelling type includes detached house, independent unit, row/terrace house, apartment, and other. The proportion of detached houses among the 10 suburbs sampled in this research varies from 70% in Heidelberg West in Melbourne to 100% in Flagstaff Hill in Adelaide. The table below shows the proportion of detached, independent, row/terrace, apartment, and other housing types in each of the 10 suburbs.

Table

5. A few researchers concur with the findings in this paper. See Williamson (2013) and Gregory et al. (2008).