Energy Demands

Apartments

Facts

Although an apartment is more energy efficient than a single family home, they share many of the same energy challenges. Up to 51% of electricity costs can be attributed to appliances, 18% to air conditioning, 5.8% to space heating, and 8.8% to water heating. Among appliances, refrigerators consume the most electricity (14% of the total); followed by lighting (9%); clothes dryers (6%); while TVs consume more energy than all other electronics. If all U.S. residents were to switch to more efficient appliances, appliance energy consumption would decrease by 27%.

Source: EIU Calculation based on EIA data

Source: McKinsey

Many electronics—such as TVs, DVDs, CD players and microwaves—use energy when switched off to keep display clocks lit and memory chips working. This so-called “idle” setting represents 5-10% of U.S. energy use and costs consumers more than $11 billion annually.

Source: Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory; available: http://standby.lbl.gov/standby.html

Source: American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy; available: http://www.aceee.org/pubs/a981.htm; Consumer Reports, http://blogs.consumerreports.org/home/2007/09/standby-power.html

Future apartment buildings will incorporate a "whole-system" design that will save more than 75% of heating energy through the use of integrated solar gain (using natural light for heat), thermal storage, and well-insulated foundations and exterior walls and roofs. For example, the effective design, selection, and orientation of windows can significantly reduce heating and cooling needs by 10-20%. At the same time, apartment buildings will use integrated electric lighting control systems and compact fluorescent light/LED bulbs to further reduce light energy use by 66%, excluding the heating offset. If every American home replaced just one light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, save over $600 million annually, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of nearly 800,000 cars.

Source: Rocky Mountain Institute; "International Energy Outlook 2006," Energy Information Administration; Energystar.gov