Residential energy and transport coupling for neighborhood decarbonization in transit-oriented development

Urban energy transitions are most meaningful when operational energy use in buildings and everyday mobility is assessed together rather than in isolation. This study examines how residential and transport energy jointly shape neighbourhood-level carbon footprints in a transit-oriented context by coupling Building Energy Use and Transport Energy Use for 700 households located within a 500 m buffer of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) stations in a rapidly growing metropolitan setting. Monthly electricity and natural gas bills are used to derive household energy use, while self-reported travel diaries (modes, distances and trip frequencies) provide transport energy use; both are converted to CO2e using standardized energy-to-carbon factors. Building and transport results for the sample are synthesised to construct household's total energy use and CO2 footprint and to compare station-level patterns along the corridor. Results indicate that an average household's transport energy use is roughly twice its residential operational energy use, and that buildings and transport make broadly comparable contributions to direct operational CO2 emissions. Central, well-serviced station areas generally exhibit lower combined (building and transport) energy consumption than more peripheral locations, suggesting that compact, transit adjacent residential environments moderate mobility energy demand while accommodating diverse building operational intensities. The study concludes that integrating residential efficiency measures with mobility planning and transit-oriented development can provide more effective and scalable carbon reductions than treating building and transport policies separately.