New Approaches for Household Energy Conservation; In Search for Personal Household Energy Budgets and Ditto Reduction Options

Introduction During the nineties it was increasingly acknowledged that households and lifestyles are entities relevant to the quest for ways of reducing long-term energy impacts [1]. Since most consumer activities take place within households, a large part of our resource use is performed by these households. Direct (energy for space heating, electricity and gasoline) and indirect (needed for the production, distribution and waste disposal of goods and services, e.g. the production of food) energy flows through households add up to about 80% of the total energy flows through society for the Netherlands [2].