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Water Heaters Benchmarking published

Throughout the developed world, the heating of water for domestic use is one of the largest consumers of energy in the household sector. However, water heaters vary in their type and mode of operation, the source of energy used and, potentially more than any other domestic appliance, the actual energy consumed is impacted by consumer usage patterns and ambient environmental conditions. Such complexity creates a number of challenges for policy makers seeking to understand and effectively manage water heating energy consumption. To provide policy makers with such information, this Benchmarking Report seeks to compare the performance of storage, instantaneous and heat pump water heaters available in a number of national markets by type, between type and by energy source. The report also seeks to outline the primary regulatory interventions in each jurisdiction and, where possible, provide an analysis of the associated improvements in the energy performance over the 2000-2015 period. The products and regulatory policies compared are those recently available in Australia, Canada, China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Sweden, and the USA.