The aim of this paper is to provide an up-to-date review of the various modeling techniques used for
modeling residential sector energy consumption. Two distinct approaches are identified: top-down and
bottom-up. The top-down approach treats the residential sector as an energy sink and is not concerned
with individual end-uses. It utilizes historic aggregate energy values and regresses the energy
consumption of the housing stock as a function of top-level variables such as macroeconomic indicators
(e.g. gross domestic product, unemployment, and inflation), energy price, and general climate. The
bottom-up approach extrapolates the estimated energy consumption of a representative set of
individual houses to regional and national levels, and consists of two distinct methodologies: the
statistical method and the engineering method.