[Special Feature: Rethinking Japan's Living Environment] Miyoko Shimokawa: Changes in Lifestyle and the Future of Household Energy Consumption in Japan

2021/12/06

The 26th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26) was held in Glasgow, Scotland, UK, from late October to mid-November 2021. In Queen Elizabeth's opening address via video message, she expressed her hope that we would "move from a time of words to a time of action" for the sake of "our children and our children's children." While the Paris Agreement adopted six years ago led many countries to set greenhouse gas emission reduction targets for 2030 and 2050, a consensus has not yet been reached on a goal with a clear timeframe for limiting the temperature rise to less than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

Japan has announced a 46% reduction by 2030 compared to 2013 levels, but it is said that this is not sufficient to achieve the global goal of less than 1.5°C. In the Plan for Global Warming Countermeasures approved by the Cabinet this October, the household sector is required to reduce energy-related carbon dioxide emissions by 66% to achieve the 46% reduction.

Japan's overall energy consumption turned toward a general downward trend following the 2008 financial crisis. According to the Energy White Paper 2021*1, the latest data for 2019 shows a decrease of 8% compared to 2013, and an 11% decrease in the household sector. Since the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, the residential and commercial sectors (business and household), which had continued to increase while the industrial and transport sectors saw reductions, began to show reduction effects around 2014. However, even when converted to carbon dioxide emission reductions, the household sector is at minus 23%*2. It is still far from the 66% reduction target.

In 1998, Japan revised the Energy Conservation Act to expand the scope of factories and transport operators and to strengthen various measures such as the Top Runner Program. With the Cabinet's approval of the Kyoto Protocol Target Achievement Plan in 2005, attention focused on the residential, commercial, and transport sectors, where increases were significant, and support for energy-saving actions involving consumers also grew. For example, the Ministry of the Environment (at the time) encouraged the creation of "Environmental Household Account Books," and many initiatives were undertaken by local governments and private companies. Most involved filling in household electricity and gas consumption on designated forms, calculating emissions by multiplying by carbon dioxide emission factors, and using this as motivation for energy saving. This overlapped with the trend of environmental education that grew during the same period and was implemented as part of integrated studies in schools, involving families. Against the backdrop of the spread of home PCs and internet connections starting in the early 2000s, web-based environmental household account book services also began.

As an example, the authors launched an energy-saving lifestyle support website*3 in 2002 that anyone could use for free. While the general perception is that energy-saving actions in the home are based on "endurance," the authors wanted to propose a way for energy-saving actions to be "fun." Could we make fun energy-saving activities a continuous habit by using energy-saving actions as a medium for families to enhance communication, particularly by increasing children's motivation? With the aim of sparking interest and leading to energy-saving actions by asking, "How do our carbon dioxide emissions compare to last year or to other families?" or "How much are we contributing to the global environment?", we added various visualization functions to the environmental household account book. In 2004, we received the Minister of the Environment Award in the "Global Warming Prevention Activity Countermeasures Practice Category." While many other environmental household account book initiatives ended by around 2020, the authors believed there was meaning in continuity. Currently, in addition to the manual input method, we have evolved the system to automatically link with HEMS (Home Energy Management System) and continue to operate it for a limited membership.

Meanwhile, in the academic world, the "Behavioral Energy Consumption Consortium (BECC JAPAN)" was established in 2014. Based on behavioral economics, research is progressing on methods to naturally guide people toward energy-saving actions through "nudges" (a concept proposed by Professor Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2017), which are "methods to help people voluntarily make better choices."

The issue of global warming, which was widely recognized in the 1990s, has evolved into the social issue of sustainable development. In the "2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development" adopted at the UN Summit in 2015, it was described as an international goal called the "Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)," encompassing all relationships between people, society, and the planet.

In the future, I hope that the trend of the SDGs, which goes beyond just carbon dioxide emissions, will involve consumers, and that consumer communication will move private companies, leading to various initiatives.

The authors developed and continue to operate an energy-saving lifestyle support website to aim for "fun" energy-saving actions. The energy-saving actions for this purpose mostly target "diligent actions" to eliminate waste in electrical appliances and heating/cooling equipment, such as "lowering the air conditioner setting by 1°C" or "frequently turning off lights." While the website is designed to make these actions enjoyable, they are not inherently actions for the sake of enjoyment or comfort.

On the other hand, Japan has a culture of beautiful four seasons where nature is something to be enjoyed or compromised with. We thought that if these lifestyles of enjoying nature could contribute to energy saving, they would be effective as a uniquely Japanese sustainable way of living alongside "diligent actions." For example, according to the results of the "Survey on Actions to Enjoy Nature and Electricity/Gas Consumption" conducted by the author, households where the living-dining (LD) area has poor ventilation and where the air conditioner is turned on immediately when it is hot tend to have the highest annual energy consumption. These households also show a tendency to engage less in actions such as planting greenery in gardens or on rooftops, or viewing the sunset or moonlight. Conversely, it was confirmed that households that more frequently view the sunset or moonlight tend to have lower annual energy consumption. Furthermore, the results of the "Survey on Perception of Home Green Environment and Electricity/Gas Consumption" showed that if "the area in front of the living room window is covered with soil or grass" or "the greenery visible from the living room window accounts for 20% or more of the window area (greenery visibility rate of 20% or more)," the contribution to annual energy consumption reduction is significant. In particular, having "the area in front of the living room window covered with soil or grass" was found to have an impact comparable to "somewhat engaging" in energy-saving actions (while "actively engaging in energy saving" had about double that reduction contribution). As shown by these results, we believe that living in a residential environment that enjoys nature can provide hints for reducing household energy consumption while feeling comfortable.

Now let's look inside the home. Human comfort is generated not only from relationships with nature but also from relationships with people. According to the results of our "Survey on Family Lifestyle and Electricity/Gas Consumption," cases where residents (family members) are seen spending time together in the home tend to have more conversations about energy-saving actions and environmental issues, and the implementation rate of energy-saving actions increases. The act of "spending time together" not only has the effect of reducing lighting and heating/cooling in individual rooms but also leads to encouraging energy-saving actions among residents, resulting in a tendency for lower annual energy consumption. Spending a certain amount of time in the same space, not only when children are young but also as they grow up, can be said to have the dual benefits of increasing the comfort of family relationships and reducing energy consumption effects.

Under the circumstances of the global COVID-19 pandemic since late 2019, the digitalization of people's lives has accelerated, and these changes will likely never return completely to the previous world. In particular, as digitalization progresses in relationships with people, including work and learning environments, activities that were previously conducted outside the home are increasingly brought inside, causing changes in lifestyle hours.

The authors focused on changes in household energy consumption brought about by changes in lifestyle hours and analyzed and reported on electricity consumption data obtained from HEMS installed in homes (2,427 cases*4). As shown in Figure 1, compared to the same month in 2019, the trend of increasing household electricity consumption has continued since March 2020 (even excluding the influence of temperature). Remote work, which spread in April 2020, was implemented by over 40% of men and over 20% of women in April-May 2020, and has remained at over 30% for men and over 10% for women even around the second state of emergency, showing a certain level of establishment.

Figure 2 shows the results of a survey conducted from January to March 2021 regarding housework and actions that increased during the day compared to the previous year. For both men and women, housework such as "cooking" and "cleaning" and "watching movies/TV" increased, but for housework, the trend is split with women cooking and men doing laundry and cleaning. It is also interesting to see that while "interacting with children/learning support" increased among younger people, "online shopping" (both genders), "walking, etc.," and "sleep" (men only) increased among middle-aged and older people.

Among these representative changes in lifestyle, how did electricity consumption, which is affected by residents' lifestyle hours, change? Figure 3 shows the changes in electricity consumption by time of day, using April as an example. In 2020, the increase in electricity consumption during lunchtime and evening is prominent. Also, the peak of electricity consumption seen at waking time shifted about two hours later from 2019 to 2020 and lingered toward midday, but the peak position returned to its original place in 2021. In 2021, partly because elementary and junior high school students were attending school, the morning time did not remain shifted. However, the evening peak has remained shifted about one hour earlier in both 2020 and 2021 compared to 2019, which is presumed to be an effect of remote work and other factors.

Combining these changes, annual electricity consumption in fiscal 2020 increased by 9.7% compared to the previous year. In particular, as shown in Figure 1, the increase in January 2021 during the state of emergency was large, which can be said to be the result of 72% of people spending the year-end and New Year holidays at home (compared to 32% in 2020), when heating usage is high.

Multiple research reports have analyzed that household energy consumption has increased under the changes of the new lifestyle. It is very interesting to see whether these increases in the household sector can first be offset by energy consumption in the business sector. I am eagerly awaiting the publication of the white paper that will include Japan's 2020 energy consumption statistics.

Meanwhile, while recovering the economy depressed by the pandemic, rules are being reviewed and established, and new technologies and business models are being developed in various industries to achieve the declarations of the Paris Agreement. From the standpoint of housing supply, in addition to research and development to reduce energy consumption during manufacturing, construction, operation (living), and disposal, we are also focusing on creating systems to actively produce, procure, utilize, and supply renewable energy*5.

Will the lifestyle of the digital society, which will evolve further, be able to move in the direction of suppressing energy consumption? Will the movement toward carbon neutrality on a supply chain basis, which is growing in the industrial sector, accelerate with the tailwind of ESG investment and people's ethical consumption awareness? And how will these irreversible trends change people's lives and the nature of Japanese housing? Precisely because we are in an era of accelerating change, I want to continue to work with dreams for the sake of future children.

*3 Asahi Kasei Homes Newsletter "Regarding the 10-Year Activity Results of 'Eco-Zou-san Club'", June 2014

*4 Ibid. "Analysis of Annual Household Electricity Consumption Trends During the COVID-19 Pandemic from HEMS Data", July 2021

*5 Ibid. "Moving Forward the Achievement of RE100 Targets to 2025; Promoting Local Production and Consumption of Electricity through Unique ZEH-M Rental Housing", August 2021