Annual Energy Outlook 2022

Electricity continues to be the fastest-growing energy source in buildings, with renewables and natural gas providing most of the incremental electricity supply

Over the projection period, use of electricity expands to meet a variety of needs in homes and commercial spaces

Electricity continues to be the fastest-growing source of energy used in buildings, even as lighting, air-conditioning, and other end uses see efficiency gains. In our Reference case, onsite generation from solar PV grows faster than purchased grid electricity for buildings during the projection period. We project distributed generation technologies such as solar PV will grow to supply 8% of electricity consumed in households and 6% of electricity consumed in commercial buildings in 2050, despite declining electricity prices.

Federal minimum energy efficiency standards, the availability of subsidies for energy-efficient equipment, and technological improvements increase the efficiency of commercial equipment and household appliances in the Reference case. Incremental increases in equipment efficiency reduce consumption, offsetting the effects of household and floorspace growth.

The Reference case reflects evolving consumer demand for electricity over time

U.S. consumption of electricity for many major end uses—including space heating, water heating, refrigeration, and lighting—decreases over time. Growing adoption of space cooling equipment and increasing cooling demand in the residential sector cause associated electricity consumption to grow 77% from 2021 to 2050. At the same time, we project residential electricity used to serve miscellaneous electric loads (MELs) to grow 20% by 2050 for devices and technologies that we explicitly model. MELs include televisions, personal computers (PCs), smartphones, tablets, pool pumps, and other uses.

Figure 8.

We project that energy consumed by traditional computing equipment, specifically desktop PCs and laptops, will decrease through 2050, offset in part by increasing numbers of monitors per computer. We project electricity consumed by tablets to increase over time, and we project electricity used to recharge smartphones in U.S. households will grow at a faster annual rate than population. We project the average number of smartphones per household to grow 8% between 2021 and 2050, up to 2.4 phones per household, on average. In 2050, we project that an average of 2.5 people live in each U.S. household.

Projected electricity used by televisions and related equipment declines as newer models replace less energy-efficient televisions through 2050, despite increased use of video game consoles. Consumption of electricity from other MELs generally continues to increase over time as personal disposable income grows.

Figure 9.

In the commercial sector, electricity for space cooling grows by 38% over the projection period. We project MELs to consume 29% more electricity in 2050 than in 2021 in U.S. commercial buildings. Not all equipment, appliances, and devices contribute to these increases. For example, we project the number of monitors per computer to increase relative to 2021 levels. However, we project the associated energy consumption to decrease by more than half in 2050 compared with 2021 as new monitors replace older models that consume more energy. Meanwhile, consumption by data center servers in commercial buildings expands through 2050. As a result, by 2050, we project energy use by commercial IT and office equipment to increase by 67% from 2021 levels. Projected increases in service sector output drives additional growth in other commercial MELs.