Energy Cultures 2: Data Mining: Trends in Household and Business Energy Use

Abstract

This document summarises the major trends in energy use in New Zealand over the last 20 years or morefor which data is available. The major features that the data show are: • Energy efficiency in some sectors is increasing, while in others it is decreasing. Overall, the trend is positive: although we are using more energy overall, that is because there are more people and more economic output, not because we are making bad choices. (This does not take into account choices we might have made, i.e. opportunity costs) • From 1990 to 2013 the proportion of energy used by business and households decreased,and hence the proportion of energy used for transport has increased. • The major use of energy in New Zealand is for transport, which is not covered in any great depth in this report. However an important finding of this report is that it appears that is it very difficult to quantify the amount of energy used in the Transport sector for business vs. private purposes. • Data gaps identified include that there are no nationally collected and validated time-series data on: – transport for business purposes – household energy use in any more detail than can be found in one question in the Census of Population and Dwellings (on space heating)