DEVELOPMENT OF ENERGY CONSERVATION PROGRAMS FOR RESIDENTIAL AND SMALL COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS IN THAILAND

Abstract

This paper projects five scenarios of the energy
consumption of residential houses and small commercial
buildings in Thailand in the next 20 years from 2010 to
2030. The first scenario presents the consumption trend
at which the energy performance of the household
appliances and equipments and the behaviors of the
energy end-use have no change during the period. This
scenario represents a “Business as Usual†case and is
called BAU I. The second scenario presents as well a
BAU case but derived from different data sources,
designated as BAU II. Even developed from different
methods, both BAU I and BAU II show similarly that the
energy consumption of the sector in 2030 will increase
two folds from the present 2010. Scenarios III and IV
examine two specific cases of fuel switching for cooking.
First, liquid petroleum gas (LPG) is substituted totally by
electricity. This situation will lead to a crisis of the
affordability of electricity of the whole country. Second,
fuel wood and charcoal are substituted by LPG. This
will again lead to a serious scarcity of LPG. The results
of this study also demonstrate that a desirable scenario of
intensively implementing various energy conservation
campaigns can reduce the consumption of the sector upto
23% of that under BAU II.