Energy Efficiency and Energy Savings: A View from the Building Sector
A survey of senior building sector executives on the feasibility of implementing energy efficiency measures across their sector in China, Europe, India and the U.S.
64 result(s) found
A survey of senior building sector executives on the feasibility of implementing energy efficiency measures across their sector in China, Europe, India and the U.S.
Briefing
A survey of senior building sector executives on the feasibility of implementing energy efficiency measures across their sector in China, Europe, India and the U.S.
Highlights
A survey of senior building sector executives on the feasibility of implementing energy efficiency measures across their sector in China, Europe, India and the U.S.
Case Study
A survey of senior building sector executives on the feasibility of implementing energy efficiency measures across their sector in China, Europe, India and the U.S.
Green building has received increased attention over the past decade from both environmental economists and policymakers. While there is no single definition of “green buildings” or its related policy, researchers and organizations tend to emphasize resource efficiency in building and reducing the impacts of buildings on human health and the environment.
This evaluation, conducted by Industrial Economics Incorporated on behalf of BTO, centers on a retrospective cost-benefit analysis of selected Building America program activities in the new residential market. It estimates the economic rate of return by comparing the economic benefits attributable to a subset of key practices advanced by Building America to DOE’s total investment in the Building America program from its inception in 1994 through 2015.
It is now established that energy use in buildings is a significant source of global greenhouse gas emissions and that abatement by the building sector can provide significant social, economic and environmental benefits. This paper examines the application of socio-technical transition theory to the building sector with Australian energy policy as a case study. The relatively high level of local building construction offers significant opportunities for market transition with appropriate policy settings so this national case has international implications.
This report presents the outcomes of a pilot study exploring how the building and planning system is delivering a sustainable built environment in Australia. It identifies four key issues emerging from the research highlighting both the challenges and opportunities in implementing ESD in the built environment in the Victorian context. These are: 1) the gap between the planning and building system; 2) weaknesses in the planning system; 3) governance, inconsistencies, and coordination; and 4) improving the system – networks and advocacy.
Buildings are the focus of European (EU) policies aimed at a sustainable and competitive low-carbon economy by 2020. Reducing energy consumption of existing buildings and achieving nearly zero energy buildings (NZEBs) are the core of the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) and the recast of the Energy Performance of Building Directive (EPBD). To comply with these requirements, Member States have to adopt actions to exploit energy savings from the building sector.
This study examines the sources of evidence that influence decision-makers who design or develop office buildings, and aims to explain why some managers engage more in evidence-based practice (EBP) than others. A mixed methods approach is conducted that combines quantitative results from 187 senior managers in the built environment and qualitative data from 18 interviewees. The respondents evaluated the use and trustworthiness of different sources of evidence, followed by an assessment of practitioners’ adoption and understanding of EBP.
There is now widespread recognition in the international community that the commitments made by national governments under the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015 cannot be achieved without concerted action by cities. Fortunately, many mayors have shown strong commitment to tackling climate change and a willingness to collaborate to achieve this goal.
Many recent major studies, including the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, have attested that energy efficiency is humanity’s prime option to combat climate change in the short- to mid-term. The potential to avoid CO2 emissions cost-effectively has been reported to be significant through efficiency policies. However, the review of global research findings on the quantification of cost-effectiveness of opportunities through improved efficiency has highlighted that there is a major shortcoming in the vast majority of such calculations.
Key messages 1. The Buildings sector of today has an oversized ecological footprint. The buildings sector is the single largest contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), with approximately one third of global energy end use taking place within buildings. Furthermore, the construction sector is responsible for more than a third of global resource consumption, including 12 per cent of all fresh water use and significantly contributes to the generation of solid waste, estimated at 40 per cent of the total volume.
It is clear that city must be part of the solution if an urbanizing world is to grapple successfully with ecological challenges such as energy depletion and climate change. A system dynamics model was developed in this study using STELLA platform to model the energy consumption and CO2 emission trends for the City of Beijing over 2005–2030. Results show that the total energy demand in Beijing is predicted to reach 114.30 million tonnes coal equivalent (Mtce) by 2030, while that value in 2005 is 55.99 Mtce, which is 1.04 times higher than the level in 2005.
The review of policies being implemented in China, the EU, India and the US presented in this report has also identified some key challenges that we must address if we are going to realize the mitigation potential of the building sector. Chief among these is the need to improve our monitoring of the impact that our policies are having. Lack of measured and verifiable data on the influence of policies on building energy performance currently hampers our ability to assess and continuously improve their effectiveness.
In this work, the literature about the relationship between thermal comfort and productivity in workplaces is reviewed and explored by means of a co-citation analysis—i.e., a factor analysis applied to the mutual citations of the most relevant contributions. A structure of three main clusters of papers describing the relationships between workers’ thermal comfort and productivity were identified according to the factor analysis and then confirmed with a multidimensional scaling.
This article provides useful information that could help you address some barriers to sustainable initiatives: Every executive that you speak to is aware that data can be manipulated and may be skeptical of studies conducted by organizations that could benefit from a particular set of results. So I've included information on independent third-party studies. In challenging economic times, people are particularly concerned about short-term cash flow.
The paper answers three research questions: (1) Which policies prevail in Germany and Norway to foster the deployment of energy efficient and decarbonized solutions for residential buildings? (2) How do these policies respond to country-specific barriers to the energy transition in the building sector, and (3) What effects do they have on the actual implementation of technological and societal solutions?
The Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) commissioned Energy in Buildings: 50 Best Practice Initiatives as a practical, user-friendly resource for property owners and managers, hoping that this will lead to greater awareness and implementation of initiatives across the property industry to reduce costs and emissions.
Globally, building energy regulation has been an effective policy instrument for reducing energy use and carbon emissions. In Australia, the majority of regions address building performance through the National Construction Code. However, in 2004 the New South Wales government introduced a planning instrument called the ‘Building Sustainability Index’, known as BASIX. Until now there has been limited investigation of this sustainability index approach compared with addressing issues individually through building standards.