The role of the benchmarking tools in increasing the collective awareness of energy consumption at the domestic sector

The Palestinian energy sector faces several challenges which are: the energy insecurity, the high fuel prices, the increase in demand and the absence of sustainable consumption. Despite that the energy consumption per capita in Palestine is one of the lowest in the region, energy efficiency can have positive impact on the living conditions of the Palestinian households and increase the resilience of the community. Benchmarking tools for quantifying the energy consumption and defining the impact of efficiency measurements can play a main role in increasing the collective awareness of households towards sustainable consumption of energy. The research focuses on heating and cooling (HC) energy consumed in the domestic sector. A multimode survey was used to collect physical characteristics of the building, the socioeconomic characteristics and the thermal behaviour of the households. Data was collected from 320 households in Hebron. Regression models were developed as benchmarking tools for estimating the heating and cooling energy consumption. A regression model to estimate the cooling energy using fans is presented in this paper as a sample of these tools.