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| Fig. 1: Chart displaying the residential sector and total U.S. primary energy consumption by year from 2020-2024. Also displays the residential sector's relative share of total energy consumption for a specific year. [1] (Image Source: B. Ma. |
Energy use in residential buildings plays a significant role in the United States total energy consumption. Households require energy for heating, cooling, lighting, appliances, and more, and as climate patterns shift and residential energy demand follow suit, understanding residential energy consumption is critical for identifying opportunities for savings and emissions reductions. Quantifying how much energy homes and residential buildings use can help provide a baseline for evaluating progress in household energy efficiency and emissions reductions efforts. This report will focus on the annual total energy consumption from residential buildings in the United States since the turn of the decade (year 2020-2024), measured in gigajoules (GJ), and then analyze its relative % contribution to the total U.S. energy consumption throughout the same time period. As I analyze the residential sector - total energy consumption trend, I will ask the following questions: Is the share of total U.S. energy consumption attributed to the residential sector increasing, decreasing, or remaining stable between 2020 and 2024? If there is a change, is it statistically significant?
Energy consumption and statistics for the United States are taken from the U.S. Energy Information Administration's Monthly Energy Review October 2025. [1] Energy consumption figures are further categorized into sectors, with one of these sectors being residential. Total energy consumption is reported in gigajoules (GJ) after conversion from British thermal units (Btu).
A linear regression test is also performed in this report to determine the statistical significance of any change in relative % contribution to the total U.S. energy consumption.
With data provided by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, we are able to calculate and determine how much the U.S. residential sector contributes to the total U.S. Energy Consumption by year. When we take our calculations and illustrate them on Fig. 1, we can see that there is a noticeable decline between the years 2020-2024 in the residential sector's relative contribution to the total annual U.S. energy consumption. Fig. 1 shows that the residential sector's contribution drops from over 21% in the year 2020 to roughly 19.50% in the year 2024. [1] This downward trending line means that the residential sector is becoming less energy intensive relative to the total U.S. energy consumption. However, we must ask ourselves: is this relative change in energy consumption statistically significant, or is it just noise?
To determine the statistical significance of the relative decline in energy consumption figures for the residential sector which we calculated earlier, we need to perform a linear regression. We find that based on the sample derived from the U.S. EIA, the regression line of the downward trending line from Fig. 1 has a slope of -0.406. [1] We will test the statistical significance of this, which can be calculated by calculating the standard error of the slope and ultimately yields a standard error result of 0.102. Taking our regression line slope and dividing it by its standard error will yield us a t-statistic that will help us determine the statistical significance of the relative decline in residential sector energy consumption. We find that the t- statistic value has an absolute value of 3.98. The critical value for 3 degrees of freedom (5 data points minus 2) for a two- tailed test is 3.182 at the 95% confidence interval. Given that the absolute value of our calculated t-statistic is greater than the critical value of 3.182, we reject the null hypothesis that the slope = 0. This means that the decline in residential energy share of about .406 percentage points per year from years 2020-2024 is statistically significant with a p- value of < 0.05.
Between 2020 and 2024, the residential sector's share of total U.S. primary energy consumption declined from 21.15% to 19.53%, a decline that we found statistically significant. This change suggests that U.S. households are consuming a smaller portion of the nation's total primary energy year-by-year in a statistically significant manner.
There are several potential factors that could explain this shift such as improvements in building insulation, and HVAC efficiency. Of course, the pandemic almost surely plays a role in the statistically significant change in relative energy consumption from 2020-2024. Nonetheless, this statistically significant decline serves as an inspiration for the country to continue energy efficiency efforts and renewable energy adoption. The total energy consumption by the residential sector in 2023 which we have found and its significant share in total U.S. energy consumption highlights a potential area and opportunity for the country to increase energy efficiency and renewable energy adoption, and cut carbon emissions. The residential sector's energy consumption corresponds to nearly one-fifth of total U.S. energy consumption, meaning that it is a significant contributor to the country's emissions output. The average lifespan of an American home is about 40 years old, which means that there is still significant room for improvement in things like insulation and heat loss. [2] By improving the insulation of the average American home as well as transitioning to electric heat pumps, renewable energy sources, carbon emissions could potentially be cut by a significant amount across the residential sector.
As energy demands are anticipated to rise year after year due to climate change and shifts in weather patterns, continued progress in renewable energy adoption for households is crucial in order to make strides in emissions reductions across the residential sector. Policies that promote energy efficiency standards and renewable integration can yield strong long-term benefits that support the United States national climate goals. [3]
© Brian Ma. The author warrants that the work is the author's own and that Stanford University provided no input other than typesetting and referencing guidelines. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.
[1] "Monthly Energy Review October 2025," U.S. Energy Information Administration," DOE/EIA-0035(2025/10), October 2025.
[2] B. Goldstein, D. Gounaridis, and J.P. Newell, "The Carbon Footprint of Household Energy use in the United States," Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (USA) 117, 19122 (2020).
[3] K. Bawaneh, S. Das, and Md. Rasheduzzaman, "Energy Consumption Analysis and Characterization of the Residential Sector in the US Towards Sustainable Development," Energies 17, 2789 (2024).