Jonathan G. Koomey, , Richard E. Brown, Robert Richey, Francis X. Johnson, Alan H. Sanstad, and Leslie Shown.

Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
Berkeley, CA 94720
December 1995

In order to understand the implications of government policies, programs, and market trends, it is essential for analysts to have the latest data on energy use by end-use. This paper describes current and projected future energy use by end-use and fuel for the U.S. residential sector, and assesses which end-uses are growing most rapidly over time. The inputs to this forecast are based on a multi-year data compilation effort funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. We use the Electric Power Research Institute's (EPRI's) REEPS model, as reconfigured to reflect the latest end-use technology data.

Residential primary energy use is expected to grow 0.3% per year between 1995 and 2010, while electricity demand is projected to grow at about 0.7% per year over this period. The number of households is expected to grow at about 0.8% per year, which implies that the overall primary energy intensity per household of the residential sector is declining, and the electricity intensity per household is remaining roughly constant over the forecast period. These relatively low growth rates are dependent on the assumed growth rate for miscellaneous electricity, which is the single largest contributor to demand growth in many recent forecasts. The importance of miscellaneous electricity to overall growth in energy use and carbon emissions makes it imperative that further research explore the sources of such growth and the potential for reducing it.

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