A factor-based bottom-up approach for the long-term electricity consumption estimation in the Japanese residential sector

Recent years, the energy consumption and carbon emissions released from the residential sector have increased rapidly due to the improvement of living standards. Japan, as one of the most developed countries worldwide, is found to be the fourth largest CO2 emitter in the world. Meanwhile, Japan is currently promoting social electrification from varied aspects. And this action further brings the household residential consumption to the vital place for overall energy conservation and emission reduction plans. Although electricity consumption and prediction analysis have been widely discussed. However, previous studies mainly focused on the estimation and analysis of energy consumption at the national level, without enough discussion from prefecture-level insights. To bridge this knowledge gap, this study established a factor-based bottom-up model to estimate the electricity consumption and carbon emissions during the 2015–2040 periods in the Japanese residential sector, considering the prefectural characteristics including per capita gross domestic product, population size, household size, residential floor space area, lifestyle, weather condition, and transition effect of appliance in the future. Nine scenarios that combine three levels of household size and three levels of growth of per capita gross domestic product are taken into account to estimate the electricity consumption for space heating and cooling, water heating, cooking, and appliances. Results indicate that the total residential electricity consumption will reach a peak during 2020s. The total carbon emissions will keep decreasing by 51.14–72.16 Mt between 2015 and 2040. Based on the results of this paper, policy recommendations are given for the Japanese government.