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.

This research combines two parallel and complementary work packages.The first examines the relationship between technical building energy performance improvements relating to electricity and gas end uses (e.g.

This paper reviews the empirical literature that provides a correlation between the different barriers to energy efficiency and consumer behavior related to two domains. It evaluates behavior related to energy curtailment, which represents routine, repetitive effort to decrease consumption on a day-to-day basis. It also considers behavior related to investments, which are one time actions such as purchasing new energy efficiency technologies. The paper also reviews the existing literature that assesses the effect of policies on energy use and investment in energy efficiency technologies.

Energy efficiency policies have the unique capacity to contribute to a more sustainable energy future at an economic net benefit even when co-benefits are not included in the evaluations. The purpose of this paper is to present quantitative and comparative information on the societal cost-effectiveness and the lifetime energy savings of all light eight building energy efficiency policy instruments.

The contribution of buildings to climate change has become widely acknowledged. On 3 December 2015, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) held the first ‘buildings day’ at COP 21 (the UN Climate Change Conference) devoted to the decarbonization of the building stock. There are several forms of negative contributions that buildings make to climate change, but high on the list are embodied and operational energy demands, which largely depend on fossil fuels and result in greenhouse gas emissions.

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.

Under Article 7(1) of the Directive, France must make annual savings of 1.5 % of energy sales to end consumers compared to the average for 2010-12. To obtain the volume of energy sales, own generation of energy and the renewable share of renewable heat energy were subtracted from the non-climate corrected end energy consumption.

In-home displays, dynamic pricing, and automated devices aim to reduce residential electricity use—overall and during peak hours. We present a meta-analysis of 32 studies of the impacts of these interventions, conducted in the US or Canada. We find that methodological problems are common in the design of these studies, leading to artificially inflated results relative to what one would expect if the interventions were implemented in the general population.

This report is the first report of the ‘Energy Savings 2030’-project which seeks to help the Coalition for Energy Savings to produce a robust and timely input to the 2030 policy discussion. It brings together and summarises recent empirical evidence on costs and benefits of energy efficiency measures. The evidence gap in terms of reliable ex-post data is well known. In the majority of cases results from ex-ante modelling studies inform the debate. The research carried out for this report confirms the persistent gap in publicly available ex-post evaluations of energy efficiency programmes.

The Energy Efficiency Financial Institutions Group (“EFFIG”) identifies the need to engage multiple stakeholder groups, scale-up the use of several financial instruments within a clear and enforced “carrot and stick” legislative framework. This report identifies a number of approaches and instruments that have proven to encourage investments and multiple market barriers that stand in the way of an energy efficient Europe.

In 2009, the European Union adopted high-level goals for renewable energy, energy efficiency, and greenhouse gas reductions with targets set toward the year 2020. This was followed in 2012 by adoption of the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) (2012/27/EU), which included as a major component a requirement for Member States to create Energy Efficiency Obligations Schemes (EEOSs) on energy companies or equivalent alternative measures, and those provisions have now been in effect for three years.

Global warming and environment problems caused by the excessive emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs), along with rapid economic development has attracted the attention of many countries and regions of the world. Reducing GHG emissions is essential to mitigate the threat of global warming. Household carbon (dioxide) emissions have been recognized as one of the most important contributors to climate change, with a significant impact on both the local and global environment, and various policy instruments have been implemented by governments to bring about the reduction.

Owing to the rapid urban growth of past decades, the refurbishment of buildings has become a central topic of city development. A key aspect of building renovations deals with energy saving, both for economic and environmental concerns. The present literature mainly focuses on technological solutions for buildings, and the related data are studied with descriptive statistics. Instead, this paper aims to evaluate the energy effectiveness of refurbishment interventions from a global sector viewpoint.

Nowadays, energy efficiency (EE) is presented as a reliable strategy towards sustainable development, but its application has not been developed equitably worldwide, since most EE policies have been implemented in industrialised nations, and developing countries are still in the process of improving their EE levels.

The gap between actual carbon prices and those required to achieve ambitious climate change mitigation could be closed by enhancing the public acceptability of carbon pricing through appropriate use of the revenues raised. In this Perspective, we synthesize findings regarding the optimal use of carbon revenues from both traditional economic analyses and studies in behavioural and political science that are focused on public acceptability.

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.