Highly Resolved Reference Projections of Building Energy Use for the Contiguous United States: Building Sector Energy Baselines, Projection Methods, and Results

Technical Report · Thu May 01 00:00:00 EDT 2025

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/2565843· OSTI ID:2565843

Liu, Lixi ^[1]; Hale, Elaine ^[1]; Bianchi, Carlo ^[1]; Parker, Andrew ^[1]; Fontanini, Anthony ^[1]; Horsey, Henry ^[1]; Sandoval, Noah ^[1]; Van Sant, Amy ^[1]; Reyna, Janet ^[1]

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1. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)

This report describes one methodology of projecting energy consumption of the US residential and commercial building sectors using NREL's ResStock™ and ComStock™ as well as growth rates derived from EIA's Annual Energy Outlook (AEO). The impetus for this work is to provide an intermediate method for compiling demand-side sectoral energy projections that is suitable for grid-scale analysis, such as NREL's Standard Scenarios. ResStock and ComStock are physics-based and statistically representative building stock models of the US residential and commercial sector, respectively. Using the 2012 actual meteorological year (AMY) weather data, the sectoral energy baselines are simulated and then segmented along key dimensions (e.g., geography, dwelling/building type). The segmented results are then scaled using the corresponding annual growth rates derived from the 2021 AEO reference case to produce energy projections out to 2050. The compiled result is a demand-side grid model (dsgrid) data set suitable for use in NREL's large-scale grid models, such as the Regional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS). This simple projection method does not endogenously represent how the building stock could evolve through time. Most notably, it does not reflect large-scale electrification, for example, the conversion of space heating, water heating, clothes drying, and cooking from primary fossil fuels to electricity, as this is not part of AEO's reference case assumptions. Nonetheless this approach is more resolved and potentially extensible compared to the current method used by Standard Scenarios's reference case, which augments a sector's total load based on a single growth rate from AEO.

• Research Organization: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
• DOE Contract Number: AC36-08GO28308
• OSTI ID: 2565843
• Report Number(s): NREL/TP--5500-84471; MainId:85244; UUID:bd5966e1-4c41-4fa5-8e30-d72bed9e2fad; MainAdminId:76310
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
Annual Energy Outlook (AEO)
ComStock
ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
ResStock
building energy projection
dsgrid
reference scenario