This is a revised report from the initial Building energy codes issued in year 2008. IEA and UNDP joint report shares best practices and lessons learned among IEA member countries and non-IEA countries in improving energy efficiency in the building sector.

This study is organized with a chapter devoted to each APEC member economy, which seeks to detail:

This (English translation) document lists 35 Japanese cities and prefectures and efforts therein to become low-carbon cities.

Each record gives a number of government-instigated projects being undertaken and a government contact person.

Each record indicates how the city or prefecture is accredited as one- or more- of these:

JCM, Future City. Eco-Model City, ICLEI,C40

Various policies targeting at building energy efficiency have been promulgated by the Chinese government in the past decade. However, few studies evaluate if China is on the right path to meet its energy goals through these policies by providing an assessment of their effect in reducing energy consumption in residential buildings or the feasibility of such policies to catalyze these reductions.

Australia’s current national emissions reduction target is to reduce emissions to 26-28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. As a signatory to the Paris Agreement, Australia has committed to the goal of reducing global emissions to net zero emissions and to five yearly reviews of the national target starting from 2020, with the requirement that new pledges be higher than the previous pledge and reflect the highest possible level of ambition.

Buildings can balance the grid through proactive energy demand management and can play a leading role in transforming the EU energy market, shifting from centralised, fossil-fuel-based systems towards a decentralised, renewable, interconnected and variable system. Many actors agree that buildings have a role in shaping the Energy Market Design Initiative.

The aim of this report, prepared by the Joint Research Centre of the European Union (JRC) is to summarise the efforts undertaken by EU Member States in order to meet the requirements of Article 4 of the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED), to provide an overview of the policies and measures chosen and of the overall strengths and weakness, and to identify best practices.

Today, buildings account for 40 percent of the total energy used in the United States, with building owners and occupants spending roughly $450 billion on energy bills each year. Despite the size of the opportunity for improvement, building efficiency is not highly valued in the real estate market, largely due to a lack of available information about building performance and energy use. A growing number of jurisdictions in the U.S. are passing energy benchmarking and transparency policies to address this information gap.

Low-income energy efficiency programs are an important component of ratepayer-funded efficiency portfolios throughout the country, but there is room for improvement and expansion. In this report the authors address the challenges and opportunities of low-income programs that target single-family homes. This report includes a survey of the low-income program landscape and advice on scaling up energy efficiency in this sector.

Globally, 32% of total final energy consumption is attributed to the building sector. To reduce energy consumption, energy codes set minimum energy efficiency standards for the building sector. With effective implementation, building energy codes can support energy cost savings and complementary benefits associated with electricity reliability, air quality improvement, greenhouse gas emission reduction, increased comfort, and economic and social development.

A range of sustainability rating tools for buildings exist in Australia. In setting sustainability standards for Council buildings, this policy primarily references the GBCA’s holistic design framework and assessment tool ‘Green Star - Design and As Built’ , which is widely used in the commercial and local government sectors and considered the most appropriate tool for Council buildings.

In summary: 

1. As a result of Colombia’s new green codes, buildings are expected to consume 10 to 45 percent less energy and water. These reductions will avoid nearly 190,000 metric tons of greenhouse-gas emissions by 2021, helping big cities like Bogota achieve a goal to reduce 2019’s greenhouse-gas emissions by 16 percent compared to 2007.2,3

First adopted in 2007, and most recently renewed in 2015, New Mexico’s Sustainable Building Tax Credit supports the greening of many building types across the state. Released in October, 2017, this case study captures the impacts of this landmark policy and highlights the context and people that helped to create and sustain this nation-leading green building policy.

This is an example of LEED being used in an innovative tax policy across the United States and potentially serve as a tax model elsewhere.

To maximise the benefits from its application of BIM to infrastructure projects within its annual capital program, this framework will support the effective use of BIM across Queensland Government infrastructure delivery agencies. A focus of the framework includes BIM capability development across government and industry.

USGBC local communities around the country are helping cities jumpstart their building performance benchmarking efforts. And the results are pretty exciting. After four years of benchmarking in New York City, buildings there are using almost 15 percent less energy according to MIT professor David Hsu, one of the most widely recognized experts in energy benchmarking analysis. Learn more in this Benchmarking in Cities brief.

Housing affordability is defined and measured in a variety of ways. For ASBEC, affordability means enabling people to make a housing choice that suits their needs within their available budget – regardless of whether it involves renting, ownership or having options as they age.

This has been a major project of the AIBS Board over the past five months and represents a significant achievement in enabling AIBS to lead and influence public debate around building regulatory reform throughout Australia.

Potential gains from improving energy efficiency are substantial — not only in terms of saving energy and combating climate change, but also in terms of contributing to an array of other co-benefits, including improving human health and creating jobs. We asked Tim Farrell, Senior Advisor at the Copenhagen Centre on Energy Efficiency, what works best when it comes to boosting energy efficiency. He stressed that targeted policy measures and sufficient resources to support implementation and compliance are among a number of critical ingredients for success.

The “Clean Energy for All Europeans” package confirms the pivotal role of the EU building stock in meeting EU 2030 climate and energy targets. In fact, the projected decarbonisation of the EU energy system is mainly based on the renovation of existing buildings and the increased penetration of renewable energies in heating, cooling and power generation.

This article is part of our Urban Expeditions series, an initiative made possible by a grant from United Technologies to the National Geographic Society. As the world’s urban population expands, architects and planners are mapping out ways to make cities more sustainable. Cities produce a vast amount of emissions and waste, putting a strain on both human and ecological health. But our buildings themselves may hold a solution.