The main aim of this report is to contribute to the exchange of good practices and to support EU MS by providing potential ideas for the elaboration of long-term renovation plans. The report compiles renovation requirements as well as financial instruments, support programmes and market mechanisms for building renovation in a number of countries and regions. While the main focus of the report is on selected EU MS, a few global examples are also presented.

Pricing carbon and moving toward mandatory disclosure of climate-related financial risks, as part of a broader policy package. Accelerating investment in sustainable infrastructure, supported by clear national and sub-national strategies and programmes. Harnessing the power of the private sector, including to unleash innovation and advance supply chain transparency. Ensuring a people-centred approach, such that the gains are shared equitably and the transition is just.

The building energy efficiency labeling (BEEL) scheme has been adopted in China since 2008. However, until now, its effect on the actual building energy efficiency has not been accurately established. The objective of this study was to investigate this effect through a case study in Shanghai, China. Additionally, by performing a thorough review, potential barriers for implementing the BEEL scheme in major areas of China were analyzed.

A practical decision support pack to aid policy makers and experts in developing countries. The objective of the Sustainable Building Policies in Developing Countries (SPoD) project is to enable authorities at national and local levels to analyse existing policies affecting the building sector, and to identify packages of policy instruments for sustainable buildings, which can be adapted to fit local conditions.

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.

The United Nations General Assembly declared 2014-2024 as the International Decade of Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All), following the UN Secretary General’s initiative and emphasizing the importance of energy issues for sustainable development. One of the three objectives of the SE4All initiative is to double the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency by 2030.Improving energy efficiency is supposed to be easy to do and contributes to energy security, a better environment, quality of life, and economic well-being for all.

A new analysis framework is developed and applied to assess the benefits of building energy efficiency policies and programs. One of the main advantages of the new energy productivity analysis is that it accounts for both economic and energy performances of energy efficiency actions using only one metric. Specifically, the approach applies the concept of energy productivity to the building sector and accounts for both value added and energy savings of energy efficiency measures.

This project, “International Review of Residential Building Energy Efficiency Rating Schemes”, is the fifth project in a series of work conducted through the Building Energy Efficiency Task Group (BEET), under the International Partnership for Energy Efficiency Cooperation (IPEEC). This project report presents key governance and administrative considerations in the design of energy efficiency rating schemes, available information on the cost-effectiveness and market impact of rating schemes, barriers to uptake of schemes and lessons learned from the implementation of schemes.

The National Energy Productivity Plan (NEPP) is a package of measures to improve Australia’s energy productivity by 40% between 2015 and 2030. The NEPP is delivered jointly between the Australian Government and the state and territory governments. Energy Ministers recognised that improving energy productivity helps: businesses reduce their energy costs through innovation and modernising their infrastructure; households benefit through lower energy bills and increased home comfort; Australia reduce its greenhouse emissions.

This article is concerned with a comprehensive analysis of building energy efficiency policies in light of improvements in energy performance, living standards and climate change mitigation in China's built environment. In recent years, China has added about 1.7 billion square meters of new floor space in both urban and rural areas on an annual basis. In 2010, the total area of existing buildings in China was approximately 48.6 billion square meters, nearly twice the total of existing buildings areas in the European Union.

Energy efficiency is a complex concept which is represented in diverse fields including engineering, economics, energy, computer sciences, environmental sciences, mathematics and physics. The social sciences literature on energy efficiency, however, remains significantly underrepresented, comprising just 2.6% of the total energy efficiency literature found in this study. Energy efficiency is an important energy policy strategy globally to reduce energy consumption, secure energy supply, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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.

The Dutch Government stimulates the application of energy efficiency measures to reduce the energy requirements of buildings, which are responsible for about 20% of the Dutch CO2 emissions. For our assessment, we followed a qualitative approach, due to a lack of data. We reviewed the mix of policy instruments and used stakeholder surveys and interviews. We found that energy use is not very likely to decline fast enough to achieve the Dutch policy targets for 2020. For new buildings, the policy mix works well, but its contribution to the policy targets is limited.

This document is a tool designed to help organizations and policymakers around the world craft their own Roadmaps—published documents that detail the economic, jobs, environmental and security benefits of doubling energy productivity—that clearly articulate a target date for doubling energy productivity and detail achievable policy recommendations necessary to achieving the goal. Clean energy markets around the world are undergoing a revolution as countries, companies and citizens seek paths to a prosperous economic future that also protect the environment.

With increasing global awareness of sustainable development, federal and local authorities in the UAE have developed agendas for energy efficiency in all development sectors, especially for buildings and urban development. With the belief that urban form is integral to urban sustainability, several recently developed single-family social housing neighborhoods in the UAE have shifted from conventional sprawling urban forms to more compact ones. Unfortunately, the impact of this shift on operational and cooling energy use intensities (EUIs) is unknown.

Building energy code change in Australia, and many other developed nations, is subject to standardised economic tests, with a net present value calculation at the heart of the economic analysis. Although many nations have introduced minimum energy efficiency standards for residential and commercial buildings, increases in stringency have been hindered by limitations to the range of private and societal impacts typically incorporated in regulatory impact assessments.

This Annual Report covers the second in a 15-year plan and shows that the NEPP has continued to progress well. Throughout 2017, measures across the work plan have advanced and many have achieved significant outcomes. There has also been wider progress in energy policy and jurisdictional measures which will contribute strongly to energy productivity and NEPP objectives. This document highlights key outcomes, their expected impacts and links to broader reforms.