The effect of building regulations on energy consumption in single-family houses in Denmark

An important part of the work on energy savings is to evaluate the effect of measures for control. Based on this, Ea Energy Analyses and Roskilde University (the departments of Society and Globalisation and Environment, Society and Spatial Change) have analysed the effect of the demands set out by the Building Regulations on energy consumption

Differences in energy consumption

We had the data of about 35.000 single-family houses, collected by making observations once or several times during six years (1998 to 2003); in total more than 150.000 oberservations. Our data described, amongst other things, the characteristics of the households, outside temperatures and of course the use of natural gas. By using advanced econometric methods, we have been able to use this data to find differences in the energy use related to the set of building regulations in effect when the house was built.

We would like to thank HMN Natural Gas for informations about gas usage. Further data was gathered from Statistics Denmark. The project was financed by Danish Energy Agency and Roskilde University. The grant from the Danish Energy Agency was originally given to AKF, Anvendt Kommunal Forskning (Applied Municipal Research).