Sustainability

27Energy Needs for Sustainable Buildings and Transportation

Rehan Khan, Suchit Deshmukh, and Ritunesh Kumar

Discipline of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Indore, India

27.1 Introduction

Energy is the key ingredient for the process of development of human civilization. All life on the planet earth is made possible by solar energy captured through plants and passed through ecosystems. The rise of human civilization is marked by innovation and development in utilizing and acquiring diverse sources of energy. The human population is increasing at a rapid pace, and it has achieved the present level of 7.2 billion (Pimentel and Burgess 2018). The rate of our development and its furtherance are unarguably dependent on how efficiently we can harvest and utilize energy obtained from different resources. Different forms of energy like electrical, thermal etc. are required for applications like buildings, transport, industries and agriculture. The energy demand has increased tremendously since the mid twentieth century because of urbanization and industrialization. According to Figure 27.1, energy consumption has increased sharply from 1990 to 2012 by approximately 114% with a mean increase of 11.87% in every year. The energy consumption increase rate was the highest (~34% increase) in 2000–2010 owning to the industrialization boom (Leahy et al. 2013). The total energy is mainly utilized in three sectors: buildings (residential and commercial), transportation and ...