Scenarios of energy reduction potential of zero energy building promotion in the Asia-Pacific region to year 2050

Building energy consumption in the Asia-Pacific region continues to rise. It is important to understand the energy use and future trends of 21 members of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and to find more effective ways to achieve APEC’s dual goals of reducing energy intensity by 45% of 2005 levels by 2035 and doubling the share of renewable energy in the energy mix between 2010 and 2030. Recently, promoting building toward ultra-low energy, nearly zero energy and zero energy is becoming a consensus trend. This paper aims to explore how zero energy building promotion could influence the total energy demand in the mid to long term. An EUPP (Economic, Urbanization, Population and Purchasing power parity) model was established to show the relationship between building energy consumption and its influencing factors, and the potential development path of building energy consumption in APEC was predicted by using the model. The results show that in the Business As Usual (BAU) model, building energy demand will increase from 1387.4 Mtoe in 2016 to 2456.8 Mtoe in 2050 while in the CAP model, building energy demand will be constrained to under 2000 Mtoe before 2050. In the ZEB promotion model, 897.8 to 1945.3 Mtoe could be saved separately. The share of end demand supplied by onsite renewable energy production could reach 11%–54%. The building sector has the potential to become the largest contributor to achieve the APEC energy goal and thus to the climate change goal.