| Current trends in energy demand impose increasing stress on the socio-ecological state of developed countries like the U.S. A major challenge lies in how to efficiently manage energy resources in a sustainable way to protect the environment. Various forecasting approaches have been developed to predict energy demand trends. These approaches have not investigated the influence of urban form on household energy consumption. This research combines one of the forecasting methods with sustainable development practices to predict possible energy demand based on different spatial housing forms (compact and dense, mixed uses, and low density).;The research has five objectives; the first is to develop a spatial Planning Support System (PSS) to forecast residential energy consumption. The PSS is integrated with an existing urban simulation model called the Charlotte Land Use and Economic Simulator (CLUES). The second objective is to develop a statistical operational model of household energy consumption that accounts for socio-economic, geometric, spatial, and macroeconomic condition determinants. Inserted in the PSS, this model serves to forecast consumption under a series of scenarios that account for various policies in urban development, environmental protection, and green technology applications at fine (household) through coarse (traffic analysis zone) resolutions, over short- and long-terms.;The third and fourth objectives assess the contribution of the geometries factors and the condition and socio-economic variables, respectively, to various alternatives of residential energy consumption. The fifth objective is to assess the consequences of different scenarios on social equity and energy share per household across population groups.;The research is conducted in Mecklenburg County over the 2008-2037 horizon. It determines the suitable system architecture of the developed PSS, and finds the drivers that have significant impacts on residential energy consumption. In addition, the study examines the magnitude of different sustainable policies on household energy consumption and population groups. The expected outcome is an enhanced understanding of the energy implications of various policy and planning strategies at the local, regional, and national scales, in the context of various possible future contexts. |
