Heating and cooling energy trends and drivers in Europe

This paper aims to complete and complement the information available on the past trends of thermal energy consumption in residential buildings and its drivers for Europe, as a continent and for the different countries. This paper follows the drivers identified in a previous one for the heating and cooling energy consumption, decomposing this energy demand into key drivers based on a Kaya identity approach: number of households, persons per household, floor space per capita and specific energy consumption for residential heating and cooling. Results show that all drivers did follow a consistent trend at global, regional and country level during the studied period of time, but the heating and cooling energy consumption did not follow the same trend if it was considered at global, regional or country level, showing that the energy consumption is very much influenced by all its drivers and does not follow the same trend as the specific energy consumption. Moreover, similar trends for each indicator can be found when evaluated at country or regional level, therefore as expected when aggregating data trends can be seen but details and particularities (both for the different countries and for the different studied years) are lost. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.