This report sets out the positive and negative impacts of improvements in energy efficiency in buildings that could come about through a recast of the Energy Performance Buildings Directive (EPBD). Successive studies have shown that energy efficiency offers many of the most cost-effective options for meeting global emission targets. In many cases, energy efficiency measures have been shown to be ‘negative cost’, meaning that it would be economically advantageous to implement them.

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.

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 recast of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD, 2010/31/EU) requires Member States to introduce minimum energy performance requirements for buildings, building elements and technical building systems and set these requirements based on a cost-optimal methodology. This methodology introduces – for the very first time – the prerequisite to consider the global lifetime costs of buildings to shape their future energy performance requirements.

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.

The demand for green buildings and to what extent firms will pay a premium price compared to conventional buildings is a lively debate. Policy instruments like the Swiss CO2-enactment and the Swiss Building Program encourage and incentivize investments in energy-efficient properties. Based on a corporate real estate survey, I investigate the premium percentage price firms are willing to pay for green buildings. On average, Swiss corporations are willing to pay a premium price of 3.0% for leasing, 4.75% for purchasing, and 5.0% for retrofitting.

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.

In order to carry out an ex-post assessment of the completed Building Energy Efficiency Special Planning, a comprehensive ex-post assessment methodology is established. The methodology sets out the ex-post assessment criteria from three dimensions and 27 indexes, and apply the Fuzzy Synthetic Evaluation Method to build the ex-post assessment model. Applying the methodology, this research assesses the effectiveness of the Building Energy Efficiency Special Planning in Beijing during the “12th Five-Year Plan” period.

Increasing urbanisation, changing disease scenarios, and current predictions of climate change impacts require innovative strategies for providing healthy and sustainable cities, now and in the future. The recently coined concept, Nature-based solutions (NBS), is one such strategy referring to actions that are inspired by, supported by, or copied from nature, designed to address a range of environmental challenges.

This paper outlines the approach and the cost-effectiveness potential for designing and retrofitting residential buildings to be energy-efficient in Bahrain. The analysis is focused on residential buildings since these buildings consume over 48% of the total electricity used in Bahrain. The optimization analysis has the benefit to assess both at the individual building and the national building stock levels, the potential of the application of currently proven measures and technologies to improve the energy efficiency of the building sector in Bahrain.

There is increasing interest in the idea that energy efficiency has economic, environmental and social impacts beyond energy and cost saving - a ‘multiple benefits’ perspective. However, present EU-decision making on energy efficiency is based on assessment of a very narrow range of costs and benefits. This paper investigates whether and how advocates of energy efficiency have used multiple benefits to frame their interactions with policy-makers at EU and UK level, and to broaden the appeal of energy efficiency.

Adoption of green design and technology in buildings, which can mitigate negative impacts on the environment, has been recognized as a key step towards global sustainable development. In addition to technology development, economic viability plays a pivotal role in stimulating the design, construction and use of green buildings. This paper provides a comprehensive review of recent studies on the economic viability of “going green”, including cost-benefit analyses from the perspective of building life cycle and from the perspective of major market participants.

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.

The European construction industry, like many others, is confronted by an economy that isundergoing a highly significant change, shaped by megatrends such as greater urbanisation,disruptive new technologies and digitalisation, globalised value chains and sustainability.At the same time, the European economy faces the profound challenge of meeting theambitious climate mitigation goal set out in the Paris Agreement of keeping average globalwarming to well below 2˚C.

While many researchers have analyzed the obstacles to the diffusion of innovation in building construction, little empirical evidence has been gathered about the factors associated with U.S. homebuilders’ adoption of innovative building products. In this paper, we develop a theory driven diffusion of innovation conceptual model of homebuilders’ adoption of high performance building product innovations. We are among the first to operationalize a regression model to demonstrate an application of the model using a large dataset from the National Association of Homebuilders.

Focusing on the voluntary LEED and ENERGY STAR environmental certification schemes in the United States, we investigate whether price premiums exist across all building value categories or are localized to specific value segments. We find that the largest value building segment does not demonstrate any price premiums, while the smallest value categories do. The concentrated supply of eco-labeled offices in large, high-quality buildings likely contributes to this phenomenon.

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?

This article discusses China's economic development and political influence in the Middle East, and the construction of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It also discusses Xi Jinping's vision for relationships with the Middle East states as its natural partners, the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum (CASCF), the law of value, and the antagonistic contradictions China will encounter in its path to accumulation with US hegemony in the region.