Transport, Housing and Urban Form: The Life Cycle Energy Consumption and Emissions of City Centre Apartments Compared with Suburban Dwellings

Abstract

Buildings in cities and the activities carried out therein use a significant proportion of a nation's energy consumption and produce substantial quantities of greenhouse gases in the process. Residential buildings are a large contributor, partially as a result of the transport and housing activities of households. In this study, life cycle analysis is used to calculate the total transport and housing energy and emissions from a sample of 41 households in apartment buildings in the city centre of Adelaide, Australia and compare them with suburban households. The purpose of this is to determine whether the urban density option of higher rise dwellings offers a lower environmental impact than conventional housing. The analysis includes delivered energy and greenhouse gas emissions generated by motorised travel and activities within the dwellings, and the energy and emissions embodied in household motor vehicles and the apartment buildings. The total delivered energy consumption of apartment households was found to be lower than suburban households due mainly to higher car usage, particularly in the outer suburbs. However, the analysis of total greenhouse gas emissions provided a somewhat different comparison especially when they were considered on a per capita basis. The total per capita emissions for apartment households varied considerably but, on average, exceeded those of both the inner and outer suburban households. This resulted from lower occupancy rates and higher emissions arising from higher dwelling operational and embodied energy consumption. Overall, it cannot be assumed that centralised, higher density living will deliver per capita emission reductions for residents, once the combined per capita life cycle emissions from housing and transport have been accounted for. A more vigorous educational, promotional and regulatory approach is required to achieve greater operational and embodied energy efficiency in apartment buildings to fully realise the emissions-reducing potential of such buildings in centralised locations.

Does urbanization lead to less energy use on road transport? Evidence from municipalities in Norway

“…The common feature in these studies is the lack of information on the urban form which may be ascribed to the deficiency of appropriate measures of urban area level spatial structure (Lee and Lee, 2014) as well as the limited variables in the STIRPAT framework. Indeed, many variables describing urban form (e.g., area, share of residential building type, urban density) are identified as important driving forces with environmental impacts (Boyko and Cooper, 2011;Norman et al, 2006;Perkins et al, 2009). Further, there are two arguments supporting the idea of controlling the ratio of residential building type in a municipality space area from empirical observations.…”

“…Second, the energy use per capita is more important than the total energy use when we consider the energy use efficiency. Regarding energy (or energy use/carbon emission), many researchers identify variables such as population, economic growth rates, urbanization, and age composition as key drivers of road energy demand (Belloumi and Alshehry, 2016;Liddle, 2004;Liddle, 2013;Okada, 2012;Perkins et al, 2009;Poumanyvonga et al, 2012). In addition to the aforementioned factors, urban formation patterns and urban density relative to urbanization levels are also acknowledged as important in explaining transport energy use (Boyko and Cooper, 2011;Martínez-Zarzoso and Maruotti, 2011;Norman et al, 2006;Perkins et al, 2009 …”

“…Researchers applying the STIRPAT frame to carbon emissions or energy use typically include data on population, income, urbanization level, urban density, and age compositions in their analyses, summarized in the appendix A1 (Boyko and Cooper, 2011;Fan et al, 2006;Hossain, 2011;Liddle, 2004;Liddle and Lung, 2010;Martínez-Zarzoso et al, 2007;Martínez-Zarzoso and Maruotti, 2011;Menz and Welsch, 2012;Norman et al, 2006;Perkins et al, 2009;Poumanyvong and Kaneko, 2010;Poumanyvonga et al, 2012;Yang et al, 2015;Zhu and Peng, 2012). The common feature in these studies is the lack of information on the urban form which may be ascribed to the deficiency of appropriate measures of urban area level spatial structure (Lee and Lee, 2014) as well as the limited variables in the STIRPAT framework.…”

“…Second, it is more convenient to combine urbanization rate and household size into the analysis when the household unit is considered as shown in Equation 3.1. In addition, because it is assumed that residential building type has strong relationships with age composition (Lee et al, 2016), urbanization, and urban density (Perkins et al, 2009), the share of residential building type is introduced into the estimated equation to mitigate potential bias. Furthermore, with the same urbanization rate and urbanization density, there may be different urban forms due to the differences in urban area.…”

“…This is questionable due to its multiple facets (e.g., urban area, urban density, residential dwelling spatial structure) across countries and geographical regions. In addition, many recent empirical studies have found that some urban form variables (e.g., urban area, residential density, housing sizes and types, urban structure) can have significant impacts on environment (i.e., carbon emission, energy use) (Boyko and Cooper, 2011;Fang et al, 2015;Lee and Lee, 2014;Norman et al, 2006;Perkins et al, 2009;Reingewertz, 2012 ;Yang et al, 2015;Yin et al, 2015). Therefore, further studies with careful considerations of the different urban forms become imperative.…”