DEVELOPMENT OF ENERGY CONSERVATION PROGRAMS FORRESIDENTIAL AND SMALL COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS IN THAILAND

This paper projects five scenarios of the energy consumption of residential houses and small commercial buildings in Thailand in the next 20 years from 2010 to 2030. The first scenario presents the consumption trend at which the energy performance of the household appliances and equipments and the behaviors of the energy end-use have no change during the period. This scenario represents a “Business as Usual” case and is called BAU I. The second scenario presents as well a BAU case but derived from different data sources, designated as BAU II. Even developed from different methods, both BAU I and BAU II show similarly that the energy consumption of the sector in 2030 will increase two folds from the present 2010. Scenarios III and IV examine two specific cases of fuel switching for cooking. First, liquid petroleum gas (LPG) is substituted totally by electricity. This situation will lead to a crisis of the affordability of electricity of the whole country. Second, fuel wood and charcoal are substituted by LPG. This will again lead to a serious scarcity of LPG. The results of this study also demonstrate that a desirable scenario of intensively implementing various energy conservation campaigns can reduce the consumption of the sector upto 23% of that under BAU II.