Forecasting the Building Energy Consumption in China Using Grey Model

The consumption of energy is receiving increasing attention and the building energy consumption is an important component of this. However, buildings in China, a developing country, consume large amounts of energy, and the accurate prediction of building energy consumption is particularly important for its reduction. The buildings causing energy consumption are divided into three types (i.e., rural, public and urban buildings). Using data from the period 2001–2016, the grey model was applied to predict the building energy consumption, the building area and the building energy consumption per unit area of the three building types in 2017–2020. According to the forecasting results, the energy consumption per unit area of rural buildings, public buildings and the total building energy consumption per unit area will show an increasing trend at varying degrees in 2017–2020. This indicates that the existing problems of building energy consumption have not been effectively solved. Based on the forecasting results, the problems of the building energy consumption are summarized and solutions are proposed.