Impact of climate change and socioeconomic factors on domestic energy consumption: The case of Hong Kong and Singapore

Abstract

Temperature and population growth are key drivers of energy consumption. However, the relative importance of climatic and socioeconomic factors driving energy consumption at different temporal scales is not well-understood. Therefore, we developed a time-series decomposition method to attribute the relative importance of climatic (heat index and monsoon index) and socioeconomic variables to domestic energy consumption in Hong Kong from 1981–2015. The same method was used for Singapore from 2005–2015 to test the transferability of our time-series method. Population growth and GDP were the primary drivers for domestic energy consumption in Hong Kong from 1981–2015, but the heat index became the primary driver from 2005–2015 instead. The monsoon and heat indexes were the primary drivers of domestic energy consumption in Singapore from 2005–2015. Climate change will increase air temperatures by 2–5 °C for Hong Kong and Singapore by 2100. For RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios, Singapore shows a linear relationship between temperature and domestic energy consumption, whereas the relationship is non-linear in Hong Kong. Our findings highlight the importance of understanding the impact of climatic change on monsoon mechanism and heat index, which can predict future cooling demand and help achieve sustainable development goals.

Keywords

• Energy consumption
• Climate change
• Heat index
• Monsoon index
• Population change
• Relative importance analysis