Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

A New Estimate of Building Floor Space in North America

Arehart, Jay H.; Pomponi, Francesco; D'Amico, Bernardino; Srubar III, Wil V.

Authors

Jay H. Arehart

Wil V. Srubar III



Abstract

Floor space is a key variable used to understand the energy and material demands of buildings. Using recent datasets of building footprints, we employ a random forest regression model to estimate the floor space of the North American building stock. Our estimate for floor space in 2016 is 88,033 (+15,907 / -21,861) million m2—which is 2.9 times higher than current estimates from national statistics offices. We also show how floor space per capita (m2 cap-1) is not constant across the North American region, highlighting the heterogeneous nature of building stocks. As a critical variable in integrated assessment models to project energy and material demands, this result suggests the following: (1) the North American building stock is more energy efficient than previously realized, suggesting that buildings are underutilized, (2) the embodied environmental impacts of buildings have been underestimated in comparison to operational impacts, and (3) the near-term demand for floor space and, consequently, the future demand for materials and energy have been largely underestimated.

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Mar 18, 2021
Online Publication Date Mar 30, 2021
Publication Date 2021-04
Deposit Date Mar 19, 2021
Publicly Available Date Mar 31, 2022
Journal Environmental Science & Technology
Print ISSN 0013-936X
Electronic ISSN 1520-5851
Publisher American Chemical Society
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 55
Issue 8
Pages 5161-5170
DOI https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.0c05081
Keywords floor space; building stock; North America; machine learning
Public URL http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2754147

Files

A New Estimate Of Building Floor Space In North America (accepted version) (767 Kb)
PDF




You might also like



Downloadable Citations