System dynamic model for the prediction of urban energy consumption trends

With the increasing concerns on the issues of global warming, urban heat island and depletion of fossil fuels, energy saving effort is getting more and more important, particularly in the city context. Although there are a number of sectoral energy related studies, comprehensive overview of the overall energy use in cities is still not well understood. The purpose of this work is thus to study the urban energy consumption trends based on an integrated approach, using the System Dynamic model. The objectives of this study are to investigate the urban energy consumption trends, over a period of 50 years, under different urban growth scenarios, subsequently to understand the driving force and key elements of urban energy consumption, and finally to prioritize the future directions in urban energy saving researches. The adopted model was divided into four sub-models i.e. residential, commercial, industrial and transportation sub-models. The study found that economic growth rate and industrial energy consumption rate are the key elements in minimizing urban energy consumption toward sustainability. In addition, the result of this study indicated that lifestyle is vital to be taken into consideration as it is costless compared to other measures such as technology improvement, mass public transit system, etc. that require huge long-term investments.