The review of policies being implemented in China, the EU, India and the US presented in this report has also identified some key challenges that we must address if we are going to realize the mitigation potential of the building sector. Chief among these is the need to improve our monitoring of the impact that our policies are having. Lack of measured and verifiable data on the influence of policies on building energy performance currently hampers our ability to assess and continuously improve their effectiveness.

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 project, “International Review of Residential Building Energy Efficiency Rating Schemes”, is the fifth project in a series of work conducted through the Building Energy Efficiency Task Group (BEET), under the International Partnership for Energy Efficiency Cooperation (IPEEC). This project report presents key governance and administrative considerations in the design of energy efficiency rating schemes, available information on the cost-effectiveness and market impact of rating schemes, barriers to uptake of schemes and lessons learned from the implementation of schemes.

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 UN Sustainable Energy for All initiative aims to double the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency by 2030.i Efficient buildings are vital to achieving sustainable development because they align economic, social, and environmental objectives, creating triple bottom line benefits. However, the scale and pace of current actions around the world are insufficient to transform buildings into engines of the sustainable, energy efficient economy. This second-edition report reviews government policy options that can accelerate building energy efficiency improvements.

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.

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.

While energy efficiency can contribute significantly towards improving access to modern energy services, energy sector investments in many developing countries have largely focused on increasing energy access by increasing supply. This is because the links between energy efficiency and energy access, is often overlooked. This oversight of energy efficiency is frequently a missed opportunity, as efficiency is often a very cost-effective energy resource.

Addressing housing-related energy consumption and emissions is a challenge in many countries. Low-energy housing, e.g. whole house retrofits and zero-energy new houses, is still rare in the United Kingdom, yet very much required to reduce emissions. This paper contributes to research on low-energy housing by adding new empirical material through analysing how specific drivers linked to knowledge, public policy and intermediary actors can influence successful projects.