The decarbonisation needs of the residential sector differ widely between rural and urban areas
The residential sector plays a key role in climate mitigation efforts as households can take measures to accelerate the clean energy transition. This involves refurbishing homes, using less energy and choosing goods and services supporting the circular economy.
How much homes rely on fossil fuels to meet their energy needs varies widely across regions. Buildings consume 30% of the world’s final energy and cause 26% of energy-related CO2 emissions (8% are direct emissions and 18% are indirect emissions from producing electricity and heat for buildings). Although direct emissions from buildings decreased slightly in 2022, indirect emissions increased by 1.4% in 2022. This is due to a larger reliance on electricity (IEA, 2023). In 2021, electricity accounted for 38% of the residential final energy consumption in OECD countries (3 p.p. higher than in 2010), while coal, natural gas and oil products accounted for over half. The electrification of the residential sector ranges from 12% in Latvia and Poland to 83% in Norway. Canada and the United States record particularly large disparities across states and provinces. This rate ranges from around 17% in Alaska to more than 85% in Florida, United States, and 17% in Alberta to 100% in Nunavut for Canada.
The decarbonisation needs of existing buildings with respect to energy use differ widely between rural and urban areas. Oil and coal heating systems, the most emission-intensive heating technologies, are much more common in rural areas of some countries, such as Czechia, France, Germany and Ireland. For example, in Ireland, 63% of rural dwellings use fuel oil and 14% use coal for heating, while in cities, these numbers drop to 12% and 1%. This also applies to biomass heating systems, which are common in rural areas of some OECD countries such as Chile, France, New Zealand, Portugal and Switzerland. Although better for the climate, wood burners also release air pollutants, including particulate matter, which can affect well-being. In Portugal, 59% of rural dwellings use biomass, while in cities only 13%. On the other hand, gas boilers and furnaces tend to be more common in cities, towns and suburbs than in rural areas, such as France, Ireland, the Slovak Republic, Switzerland and the United States (Figure 3.19).
Households can also help the environment by reducing their waste, recycling more and in general, contributing to the circular economy. Increased household consumption can lead to pressure on the use of water, land and materials, as well as on GHG and air pollutant emissions. OECD regions show important disparities in the evolution of municipal waste generation per inhabitant. Between 2016 and 2020, municipal waste per capita increased in more than 60% of the 223 OECD regions with available data (Figure 3.20). Except for Belgium and the Slovak Republic, most countries’ capital regions recorded a lower growth in per capita municipal waste. Capital-city regions are also at the forefront of municipal waste recovery: the share of municipal waste treated with recovery processes is 12 p.p. higher in capital-city regions than at the national level on average across countries (Figure 3.21).
