Agent-based simulation on the effect of policies on long-term energy conservation at an area level

Japan has promoted energy saving in commercial buildings through various policies such as mandatory standards for energy performance, spread of energy labelling, and relevant subsidies. For more efficient policy making, we need to know which measures are effective and how those measures should be combined. We aim to predict the effects of energy saving policies on long-term energy conservation at an area level. This study presents an agent-based simulation model which is composed of building owner agents (OA) and tenant agents (TA). This model can simulate interacts of agents in the area, where OA adjusts the rent for a building and makes a decision for retrofits, and TA moves into a building that maximize its benefits. In the simulation process, we consider not only a positive effect of policy implementation, e.g. energy conservation, but also negative effects: a risk of reducing attractiveness of the area. Therefore, in this paper, we set up an external area in addition to the mainly observed area where simulation is carried out and considered more feasible policies which prevent building tenants from moving to the external area. As a result, we found some important conclusions to achieve both growth of the area and energy conservation.