DOI: 10.14457/tu.the.2014.208
title: Energy demand analyses and GHG mitigation in Thai residential and commercial building sector for sustainable development

description: AbstractENERGY DEMAND ANALYSES AND GHG MITIGATION IN THAI RESIDENTIAL AND COMMERCIAL BUILDING SECTOR FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENTbyNichapat KongwanaratB.Eng in Mechanical Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada, 2012Thailand has recently become an upper-middle income economy country in 2011. With its population and GDP continuously climbing, its energy consumption also rises at a matching rate; thus, emitting more CO2 emissions. The residential and commercial building sector are the main consumers of electricity and biomass fuels in the countries. Any reduction in their energy demands would also mean a reduction in the energy demand and CO2 emissions of the power sector.In this dissertation, energy models were constructed for the residential and commercial building sector; and, different scenarios depicting different level of CO2 emissions limits were formed. All of these were in the effort to 1) find policies in promoting the use of efficient technologies to reduce the amount of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) released and 2) to evaluate the potential of alternative fuels and technologies in reducing the amount of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) consumption. And lastly, the resulted policies were evaluated for their social impacts.A bottom-up recursive dynamic linear optimization model called AIM/Enduse was used to construct the energy models. Two sets of scenarios were developed according to the policy timeframe; they are the Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) scenarios, which ended in 2020, and the Sustainable Building Development scenarios (SBD), which started in 2020 and ended in 2050. Three NAMA scenarios were considered with 7% (NAMA7), 15% (NAMA15) and 20% (NAMA20) CO2 reduction from the BAU scenario in 2020. Similarly, three SBD scenarios were considered with 25% (SBD25), 30% (SBD30) and 35% (SBD35) CO2 reduction from the BAU scenario in 2050. Given these emission constraints, AIM/Enduse will choose, using cost optimization, combinations of traditional and efficient technologies which would satisfy the demand of the end users.Results show that, in 2020, CO2 emissions of the two sectors will total 102.67 Mt-CO2. The NAMA7, 15 and 20 scenario would, respectively, mitigate 12%, 16% and 23% of the emissions. In 2050, the CO2 emission level would continue to rise to 258.28 Mt-CO2. The SBD25, 30 and 35 would reduce the emissions by 31%, 30% and 34% accordingly.To evaluate the social impact of energy policies, mathematical relationships between the percentage of household biomass consumption and the Human Development Index (HDI) were developed via least square regression. Results show that when the percentage is taken with respect to the Total Final Consumption (TFC) of the countries, the relationship is linear; and, when the percentage is taken with respect to the total consumption in the residential sector, the relationship is parabolic. In the short term, this analysis has shown that Thailand’s HDI score will improve the most by implementing the sets of policies obtained from the NAMA7 scenario. However, in the long term, the SBD30 scenario will be the most beneficial.