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.

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.

Cities in developing countries seldom consider the cost increases that regulations impose on development. To build legal housing, developers must meet a high minimum cost threshold established by mandatory standards. Many standards impose costs on building construction, make them less affordable to low-income households, deprive them access to legally built housing, and fuel the formation of slums.

Rapid urbanization poses a significant challenge of accommodating the poor, particularly in developing countries such as China where affordable housing has only been initiated a few years ago and will continue to be developed in the coming years. Two major considerations in affordable housing programs are cost and time, as the ability to meet the needs of low-income households is the main target of these programs. However, it is not a common strategy to address affordable housing shortage by means of incorporating sustainability features.

Thanks to new insights on the impacts that dwellings have throughout their life cycles, there has been increased attention to retrofitting innovative energy systems (IES) in existing housing. This paper uses an explorative case study design to gain more knowledge about the governance aspects of this under-researched topic. The central research question is: Which factors influence the adoption of innovative energy systems in social housing sites during renovation projects? To answer this question, eight large-scale renovation projects in The Netherlands were investigated.

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.

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.

On an average, India has more than 3000 Cooling Degree Days (CDD). The multifamily public housing being constructed under India’s Prime Minister Awas Yojana (PMAY) is aimed at providing formal housing to the society’s Economic Weaker Section (EWS). It is essential that this housing delivers thermally comfortable in-doors to the occupants. This study mapped the design and construction practices followed under PMAY Urban (PMAY-U) against India’s Residential Energy Building Code, Eco Niwas Samhita (ENS). The metric prescribed in ENS is Residential Envelope Transmittance Value (RETV).