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Reports

25 result(s) found

Going deep in energy consumption in buildings: how to achieve the best case scenario for deep savings in building energy consumption

Conference paper
Authors:
Peter Graham,
Diana Ürge-Vorsatz,
Jens Laustsen

The building sector has been identified as a sector with large potential for delivering energy savings and mitigation of GHG emissions. Yet it has been unclear what the specific role of building energy efficiency codes play in achieving these savings. Thererfore, between July 2011 and June 2012 the Global Buildings Performance Network, facilitated the development of scenarios for energy savings and GHG mitigation related to thermal energy efficiency in buildings and an international survey of the impact of policy best-practices.

Low Carbon Residential Refurbishments in Australia: Progress and Prospects

Conference paper
Authors:
Nicola Willand,
Ralph Horne

Recognising both the recent surge in interest in low carbon refurbishments of residential buildings and the diversity of emergent terminology and perspectives, the authors set out definitions for key terms and frame a discussion of the phenomenon of refurbishments. The paper focuses on owner-occupied detached homes that dominate Australia’s existing residential building stock.

Green Urbanism in Australia: An Evaluation of Green Building Rating Schemes

Conference paper
Authors:
Jessica Holz,
Thomas Sigler

Creating sustainable cities requires rethinking the built environment, a fundamental component of mitigating the environmental impacts of buildings. To evaluate this, stakeholders in Australia increasingly rely on third party verification via green building rating schemes. These rating schemes address and encourage a variety of green features which are incorporated into the design and construction of a building.

More bang for the buck – does increased code compliance result in kWh and kW savings?

Conference paper
Authors:
Chris Burgess,
Vrushali Mendon

The energy benefits of increased code compliance have generally been viewed through the lens of energy savings – kWh and therms. Peak demand reduction as an additional benefit of increased code compliance is a comparatively unexplored area – despite a general acknowledgement that there are electric demand savings (kW) associated with increased energy code compliance. The ability to include peak demand reduction as a component of the code compliance savings has important and significant benefits.

Regional construction starts: trends, impacts and energy codes

Conference paper
Authors:
Carolyn Sarno Goldthwaite,
Lauren Westmoreland

Does the adoption of new energy codes impact construction activity? As jurisdictions throughout the country continue to adopt increasingly stringent codes, this question is asked time and again. In 2015 the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships (NEEP) and the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance (SEEA) each purchased and then independently undertook an analysis of Construction Market Data (CMD) and publically available U.S.

Beyond compliance: the DOE residential energy code field study

Conference paper
Authors:
David Cohan,
Jeremy Williams,
Rosemarie Bartlett,
Mark Halverson,
Vrushali Mendon

In 2014, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) issued a FOA (Funding Opportunity Announcement) to conduct residential energy code field studies using a radically different methodology from previous studies. Historically, studies defined and measured “compliance” as the portion of all code requirements being met on a house-by-house basis. Compliance was assumed to be a surrogate for energy, but that connection was never empirically established.

Measuring the impact of a residential energy code

Conference paper
Authors:
Ken Tiedemann,
Iris Sulyma

Rigorously enforced stringent building codes can cost effectively achieve energy savings, reduce energy bills and curb greenhouse gas emissions. This paper combines on-site data from some 800 dwellings, energy use information, survey data and computer simulations to evaluate the impact of the most recent energy efficiency provisions of the British Columbia Building Code on residential energy use in British Columbia, Canada. Key findings are as follows:

A road map to building material testing and rating in developing countries

Conference paper
Authors:
Meredydd Evans,
Mark Halverson,
Linh Vu,
Sha Yu,
Huong Nguyen

Most large developing countries have a building energy code or other building efficiency policies. However, testing and rating systems to assess the energy performance of building materials often lag behind these codes and policies. Building materials play a key role in setting the energy footprint of a building. Poorly performing or poorly labeled materials can result in higher energy use and lack of market incentives to produce high efficiency products.

This subtropical life: are new apartment buildings providing locally-appropriate outcomes for apartment living in Brisbane?

Conference paper
Authors:
Rosemary Kennedy

The purpose of this paper is to present data and discussion on a critical review of a sample of multi-storey and mixed use residential buildings in the subtropical city of Brisbane in order to understand how contemporary buildings are achieving local authority policy outcomes and resident-identified attributes of locally-appropriate subtropical living.

Jump-starting Passive House in New York City and beyond

Conference paper
Authors:
Richard Yancey,
Yetsuh Frank,
Ellen Abramowitz

To reach its goal of an 80% carbon reduction by 2050, New York City (NYC) must embrace a radical change to its buildings. The Passive House design’s performance-based standard ensures occupant comfort and very low energy use. It is a pathway for NYC to transform its building stock to reach a low-carbon future. New York seeks to radically reduce its carbon emissions from buildings (60%) through regulatory and voluntary actions.

You can’t make bricks without straw: building a residential energy code support program from a utility perspective

Conference paper
Authors:
Donald Boza,
Chad Miller,
Joshua Rego,
Cherish Smith,
Stu Slote

Improvements in building energy codes cannot be fully realized unless targeted stakeholder education, training and outreach is provided to support increased understanding of and compliance with the minimum requirements. With Michigan’s adoption of the 2012 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC), an analysis determined statewide annual energy savings of approximately 480,000 MMBtu and $4 million in annual utility bill savings for homeowners from bringing below code residential new construction up to minimum requirements.

The development of the residential option table in the Washington State Energy Code

Conference paper
Authors:
David Baylon,
Chuck Murray

In 2009 the Washington State Legislature updated the legislation authorizing the Washington State Energy Code (WSEC). In the process, the legislature also set a goal that the total energy of new buildings would be reduced 70% over the performance of buildings built to the 2006 WSEC by the 2031 code cycle. To meet this ambitious goal the Washington State Building Code Council (SBCC) was authorized to develop incremental steps that would achieve this goal over the eight code cycles anticipated by 2031. The first step on that path was developed for the 2009 WSEC.

Methodology for establishing the potential energy savings from improved energy code compliance

Conference paper
Authors:
Isaac Elnecave

Currently, 37 states, covering almost 90% of the US population, have adopted at least the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC). Adoption is only the first step to more efficient buildings. To generate the promised energy savings, builders need to comply with the code. There have been many studies done to evaluate code compliance over the years, however, different studies use different methodologies; making it difficult to compare within or across states as well as across time.

How energy efficient are US homes?

Conference paper
Authors:
James Stewart

While government policies aim to increase residential energy efficiency, policymakers know little about the efficiency of the U.S. housing stock and improvements in efficiency over time. This paper estimates the average space heating efficiency of U.S. homes, improvements in residential space heating efficiency over time, and impacts of building energy codes on residential space heating efficiency. Homes built in the 1990s were about 30% more efficient than those built before 1950.

Energy policy for buildings: why economic interventions may be ineffective

Conference paper
Authors:
Robert Enker

A significant body of research confirms the major contribution that improved building performance can make to national energy and greenhouse abatement policies. The challenge facing governments is how best to realize the potential of energy efficient buildings. This paper reviews the effectiveness of economic instruments for building energy policy compared with alternative interventions such as building regulation and information campaigns.

Energy cost impact of non-residential energy code requirements

Conference paper
Authors:
Jian Zhang,
Reid Hart,
Michael Rosenberg

The 2012 International Energy Conservation Code contains 396 separate requirements applicable to non-residential buildings; however, there is no systematic analysis of the energy cost impact of each requirement. Consequently, with limited building department resources, the efforts for plan review, inspection, and training may not be focused on the most impactful items. An inventory and ranking of code requirements based on their potential energy cost impact is under development and the approach is described in this study.

Building capacity of policy-makers in South East Europe on the modelling of low carbon transformation of the residential building stock

Conference paper
Authors:
Aleksandra Novikova,
Tamas Csoknyai,
Zsuzsa Szalay,
Jozsef Feiler

The energy demand in the residential building sector represents a big challenge for Albania, Montenegro, and Serbia. Within our project entitled “Support for Low Emission Development in South East Europe”, the authors developed residential building topologies and using them as an input, designed and applied bottom-up simulation models to assess the impact of decarbonisation policy packages applied to this sector. The models were prepared in co-operation with national policymakers in the LEAP software, for which they were trained in a parallel project.

Green roofs in Australia: review of thermal performance and associated policy development

Conference paper
Authors:
Andrea Pianella,
Judy Bush,
Zhengdong Chen,
Nicholas S.G. Williams,
Lu Aye

In Australia, there is an increasing interest in using extensive green roofs to make buildings more sustainable and provide a number of social, ecological, aesthetic and thermal benefits to cities. The potential of green roofs to reduce building energy consumption has been extensively studied overseas in a variety of different climates. However, in Australia the green roof industry is relatively new. There is still very little information on the thermal properties of Australian green roofs and their performance.

No more easy refills: the move from prescriptions to performance-based codes

Conference paper
Authors:
John Arent,
Dimitri Contoyannis,
Roger Hedrick

The last two decades have seen a tremendous increase in the stringency of California’s building energy efficiency code, Title 24 Part 6. Along with these changes, the complexity of the code has increased dramatically, as different design options for building envelope, heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) and lighting systems have become available under prescriptive compliance paths.

Ex post evaluation and policy implementation in the European building sector

Conference paper
Authors:
Larissa Pupo Nogueira de Oliveira,
Nele Renders,
Tom Dauwe,
Christofer Ahlgren,
Katrina Young,
Magdalena Jozwicka

This paper focuses on the ex post evaluation of national energy efficiency policy mixes in the building sector, more specifically the effectiveness of implemented policy packages on helping to achieve energy savings and avoided greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). The analysis covers all Policies and Measures (PaMs) affecting heating and cooling of residential buildings. Main research questions are: Is there a relationship between improvements in energy efficiency and GHG mitigation and the PaM history set-up within a Member State (MS)?

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