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Purpose Consumers seldom consider end-use consumption (reuse or upcycling) when products reach the end of their lifecycle. This study shows that end-use consumption can be encouraged if individuals are primed to think creatively, engage in end-use ideation (imagine end-use) and become inspired by more original ideas. Design/methodology/approach Three studies were carried out. Study 1 tested if creativity priming resulted in more effective end-use ideation (greater number of ideas and more original ideas) compared to environmental appeals and no intervention. Study 2 tested the effectiveness of creativity priming in a longitudinal setting. Study 3 demonstrated how creativity priming and end-use ideation could be practically executed using product packaging. Findings Creativity priming represents an effective intervention to stimulate end-use consumption with particularly positive results amongst less creative consumers. However, it was not the number of generated ideas, but their originality during end-use ideation that triggered inspiration. Research limitations/implications This study demonstrates which interventions are more effective in changing consumer behaviour in favour of more sustainable practices. Practical implications Increasing environmental degradation requires consumers to change their behaviour by re-consuming products. This study shows that consumers can adopt end-use if they are primed to think creatively, imagine end-use consumption and generate more original ideas. Originality/value Creative thinking has been leveraged at product development stages, but not at the end of products’ lifecycle. This study integrated creativity priming, consumer imagination and inspiration theories to explain the underlying mechanism behind end-use consumption to scale up its adoption by consumers.

In the era of Smart Cities, in which the paradigms of smart water and smart grid are keywords of technological progress, advancements in metering systems allow for water consumption data collection at the end-use level, which is necessary to profile users' behaviors and to promote sustainable use of water resources. In this paper, a real case study of residential water end-use consumption monitoring shows how data collected at a high-resolution rate allow for the evaluation of consumption profiles. The analysis was carried out by calculating consumption statistics, hourly consumption patterns, daily use frequency, and weekly use frequency. Then, the comparison of two consumption profiles, computed before and after the COVID-19 lockdown, allows us to understand how a change in social and economic factors can affect users' behavior. Finally, new perspectives for water demand modeling and management, based on data with high temporal frequency, are presented.

The aim of this study was to develop a mathematical regression model for predicting end-use energy consumption in the residential sector. To this end, housing characteristics were collected through a field survey and in-depth interviews with residents of 71 households (15 apartment complexes) in Seoul, South Korea, and annual data on end-use energy consumption were collected from measurement systems installed within each apartment unit. Based on the data collected, correlativity between the field-survey data and end-use energy consumption was analyzed, and effective independent variables from the field-survey data were selected. Regression models were developed and validated for estimating six end uses of energy consumption: heating, cooling, domestic hot water (DHW), lighting, electric appliances, and cooking. Regression analysis for ventilation was not applied, and instead a calculation formula was derived, because the energy-consumption proportion was too low. The adj-R2 of the estimation model ranged from 0.406 to 0.703, and the maximum error between measured and estimated values was around ±30%, depending on the end use.

Introduction: Green finance plays a pivotal role in the transition to a low-carbon economy by influencing energy consumption patterns. Despite growing interest in this area, the relationship between green finance and the optimization of end-use energy consumption remains underexplored, particularly in the context of regional disparities.

It is costly and difficult to meter electricity consumption for different end uses, e.g. space heating, lighting and household appliances. We deduce a model for using cross-sectional data for total annual electricity consumption for a sample of households, together with information from energy surveys, to estimate the end uses within an econometric demand model conditional on appliance ownership. By applying a consistent method to Norwegian data for 1990, 2001 and 2006 (repeated cross-sections), we compare results over time and detect possible trends. We find that electricity consumption for many end use necessities such as washing, water heating and refrigeration varies somewhat from year to year, but they show no trend. We find a steady increase in electricity used for more untraditional end uses and newer types of appliances. Total energy consumption for heating purposes is quite stable over the time period.

Poorly implemented energy subsidies are economically costly to taxpayers and damage the environment. This report aims at providing the emerging lessons form a representative sample of case studies in 20 developing countries that could help policy makers to address implementation challenges, including overcoming political economy and affordability constraints. The sample has selected on the basis of a number of criteria, including the country’s level of development (and consumption), developing country region, energy security and the fuel it subsidies (petroleum fuel, electricity, natural gas). The case studies were supported by data collection related to direct budgetary subsidies, fuel and electricity tariffs, and household survey data.The analysis provides strong evidence of the success of reforms in reducing the associated fiscal burden. For the sample of countries, the average energy subsidy recorded in the budget was reduced from 1.8% in 2004 to 1.3%GDP in 2010. The reduction of subsidies is particularly remarkable for net energy importers. Pass-through of international fuel prices was also notable in the case of electricity generated by fossil fuel. For the sample of countries, the average end-user electricity tariff increased by 50%, from USD 6 cents in 2002 to USD 9 cents per kWh in 2010.In spite of the relatively price inelastic demand for gasoline and diesel, fossil fuel consumption in the road sector (per unit of GDP) declined in the 20 countries examined from 53 (44) in 2002 to about 23 kt oil equivalent per million of GDP in 2008 in the case of gasoline (Diesel). The most notable decline in consumption was recorded in the low and lower middle income countries. This reflects the much higher rate of growth in GDP in this group of countries and underlines the opportunities to influence future consumption behavior rather than modifying the existing consumption patterns, overcoming inertia and vested interests. Similar trends are recorded for power consumption.While there is no one-size-fits-all model for subsidy reform, implementation of compensatory social policies and an effective communication strategy, before the changes are introduced, reduces helped with the implementation of reforms.

The increasing demand to reduce the high consumption of end-use energy in office buildings framed the objective of this work, which was to design an intelligent system management that could be utilized to minimize office buildings’ energy consumption from the national electricity grid. Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) and lighting are the two main consumers of electricity in office buildings. Advanced automation and control systems for buildings and their components have been developed by researchers to achieve low energy consumption in office buildings without considering integrating the load consumed and the Photovoltaic system (PV) input to the controller. This study investigated the use of PV to power the HVAC and lighting equipped with a suitable control strategy to improve energy saving within a building, especially in office buildings where there are reports of high misuse of electricity. The intelligent system was modelled using occupant activities, weather condition changes, load consumed and PV energy changes, as input to the control system of lighting and HVAC. The model was verified and tested using specialized simulation tools (Simulink®) and was subsequently used to investigate the impact of an integrated system on energy consumption, based on three scenarios. In addition, the direct impact on reduced energy cost was also analysed. The first scenario was tested in simulation of four offices building in a civil building in South Africa of a single occupant’s activities, weather conditions, temperature and the simulation resulted in savings of HVAC energy and lighting energy of 13% and 29%, respectively. In the second scenario, the four offices were tested in simulation due to the loads’ management plus temperature and occupancy and it resulted in a saving of 20% of HVAC energy and 29% of lighting electrical energy. The third scenario, which tested integrating PV energy (thus, the approach utilized) with the above-mentioned scenarios, resulted in, respectively, 64% and 73% of HVAC energy and lighting electrical energy saved. This saving was greater than that of the first two scenarios. The results of the system developed demonstrated that the loads’ control and the PV integration combined with the occupancy, weather and temperature control, could lead to a significant saving of energy within office buildings.

In the early 2000s, the Korean government mandated the construction of only zero-energy residential buildings by 2025 and for non-residential buildings from 2030. Two decades since the start of building energy policy enforcement, Korean experts believe that it is time to evaluate its impact. However, few studies have systematically and extensively examined the energy consumption characteristics of the non-residential building stock. In this study, a framework development is implemented for defining non-residential prototypical office buildings based on Korea’s first large-scale non-residential building survey result from the Korea Energy Economics Institute (KEEI). Then, a detailed building energy model of the defined prototypical building is constructed to verify the model’s energy estimation against observed energy consumption. As an application of the model, a case study for energy policy evaluation utilizing the constructed prototypical building model is presented. Every researcher and county may have their own circumstances when gathering definition data. However, by using the best available representative data, this suggested framework may result in informed decisions regarding energy policy development and evaluation. In addition, the mitigation of greenhouse gases from buildings may be expedited.

Since electricity is a kind of clean and high quality energy, it’s very important to increase the proportion of electric power among end-use energy market for the optimization of end-use energy consumption structure. This paper mainly processed the design of reasonable evaluation index system and scientific competitiveness evaluation of electricity in end-use energy based on Fussy-AHP theory. According to the consequence of electricity competitiveness in Northeast China, it has proved that the model has high reliability and practicability.

This book explores energy savings performance contracts (ESPCs) as a means of overcoming some of the more difficult hurdles in promoting energy efficiency in public facilities. ESPCs represent a very attractive solution to many of the problems that are unique to public agencies, since they involve outsourcing a full project cycle to a service provider. From the detailed audit through implementation and savings verification, ESPCs can relieve public agencies of bureaucratic hassles, while service providers can secure the off-budget project financing and be paid from the actual energy savings, thus internalizing project performance risks. ESPC bidding also allows public agencies to select from a range of technical solutions, maximizing the benefit to the agency. Global experience suggests that ESPCs have been more effective at realizing efficiency gains than many other policy measures and programs, since the service providers have a vested interest in ensuring that a project is actually implemented. Many of the country governments interviewed for the study also saw enormous potential in bundling, financing, and implementing energy efficiency projects on a larger scale in the public sector, a method that increases the rate of efficiency gains and creates further benefits through economies of scale.