Influence of built environment on building energy consumption: a case study in Nanjing, China

Built environment plays a significant role in optimizing building energy consumption. However, few studies have explored the comprehensive effect between built environment metrics on building energy consumption. Thus, this study aims to explore interrelationships between built environment on building energy consumption focused on moderating effect. In this study, we established a built environment measure system from the perspective of land use and land cover, landscape structure and building configuration. This study explored the correlation between built environment and building energy consumption and analyzed the moderating effect of building configuration emphatically. Results show that: for integrated grids group, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and modified normalized difference water index (MNDWI) have a positive influence and impervious area (IA) has a negative influence, with NDVI has the greatest impact. Building floor (BF), building coverage ratio (BCR) and aspect ratio can weaken the positive relationship between NDVI and energy use intensity of grid (\({\text{EUI}}_{{{\text{grid}}}}\)). BCR weakens the positive effect of MNDWI on \({\text{EUI}}_{{{\text{grid}}}}\). The moderating effect of building configuration on EUI varies in the same grid group and among different grid groups. For sample 1, BCR inhibits the negative effect of mean perimeter–area ration (PARA-MN) on \({\text{EUI}}_{{{\text{grid}}}}\). For sample 2, BF promotes the negative effect of number of patches and land use richness index (R) on \({\text{EUI}}_{{{\text{grid}}}}\). And sky view factor inhibits the positive effect of IA on \({\text{EUI}}_{{{\text{grid}}}}\). This study reveals the pathways of built environment on building energy consumption. As a result, the keys of optimizing building energy consumption are the reasonable planning and optimization of the urban built environment of different land cover. Graphical abstract