Energy consumption in buildings: A compilation of current studies

© 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- nc-nd/4.0/ ).

Although the area occupied by cities is very small, they consume between 60% and 80% of the energy. Specifically, in buildings it reaches 36%. For this reason, any measure that favors the use of non-polluting energies or the reduction of energy consumption in them has a great multiplier effect. This has given rise, on the one hand, to government authorities having them as priorities for improvement, and on the other, to researchers increasing their studies on them. This work carries out a synopsis of the investigations that reveal or calculate the energy consumption of buildings. Prisma methodology has been followed for its realization. The investigation reveals that more than half of the publications have focused on residential buildings. The search for manuscripts in a systematic way did not give the expected results, so the identification of studies via other methods was necessary. In fact, more than 90% of the search has been carried out on publications obtained by other means. These have been based on the iterative search for references from those initially obtained by the Prisma methodology. In addition, a classification based on the use of the building and how the studies have been published is presented. A section including calculation methods has also been added because some studies have included buildings dedicated to different uses. Finally, approximate values of energy consumption according to the type of building and possible future variables to be used in certain buildings have been added. In this way, it is intended to facilitate the search for information for researchers interested in knowing the energy consumption in buildings based on their use.