The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Building Energy Codes Program (BECP) periodically evaluates national and state-level impacts associated with energy codes in residential and commercial buildings. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), funded by DOE, conducted an assessment of the prospective impacts of national model building energy codes from 2010 through 2040. A previous PNNL study evaluated the impact of the Building Energy Codes Program; this study looked more broadly at overall code impacts.

The series of publications review the most successful sustainable practices, resulted in ecological, economic and social benefits from the implemented projects in energy efficiency in the residential buildings, municipal heating, construction and in general in housing and community utilities.

These projects are implemented jointly by UNDP, various donors and the Government of Kazakhstan on energy saving in housing and community utilities and construction.

With skyrocketing energy demand, limited energy supply, rapid urbanization and increasing pollution levels, India critically needs energy solutions. Energy efficiency is an immediate solution, locking in energy savings in India’s growing cities. To reap energy savings, Hyderabad and Telangana State are moving forward with India’s first online system to ensure energy savings in buildings.

Three strategies for code implementation are proposed:

Developed as a common EU framework of core indicators for the sustainability of office and residential buildings, Level(s) provides a set of indicators and common metrics for measuring the environmental performance of buildings along their life cycle. As well as environmental performance, which is the main focus, it also enables other important related aspects of the performance of buildings to be assessed using indicators for health and comfort, life cycle cost and potential future risks to performance.

The ABRACADABRA project is developing a toolkit, targeting policy makers, with a focus on regulatory challenges and opportunities for boosting energy retrofitting of buildings. For this purpose, the project will investigate regulatory issues, as well as available good practices, in the project’s target countries (Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Norway, Romania, Spain, and the Netherlands).

Retrofitting has been proposed as a method to significantly reduce energy consumption and emission derived from the housing sector. Having said this it remains clear that severe restraints remain; and the concept of a “one solution fits all” is at the very least unrealistic. As it has been repeatedly supported via the Abracadabra project any potential solution must deal with significantly complex issues at technical, legislative and regulatory levels, and of course at financial and economic levels.

The latest version of the EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) aims to achieve a highly energy efficient and decarbonised building stock by 2050, and compels Member States to develop respective roadmaps, guidelines and measurable, targeted actions.

The National Development and Reform Commission of China (NDRC) guided the China Quality Certification Center (CQC) to develop a China TOP TENs Best Energy Efficient Practices list to highlight energy savings practices for the China’s buildings sector. The list covers a broad range of building practices including commercial and residential. Each practices have been weighted using a structured methodology to determine its energy saving and cost achievement, sustainability, originality and innovation, replicability, as well as co-benefits.

In a prior study entitled “Mapping of Existing Energy Efficiency Standards and Technologies in Buildings in the UNECE Region”, the UN Committee on Housing and Land Management (CHLM) and the Committee on Sustainable Energy (CSE) commissioned a comparative study on building standards in the UNECE region. The current report follows up on this by analyzing the actual prevalence of specific types of energy-efficient technologies in the buildings sector in the UNECE region, along with the levels and types of public policy interventions supporting their implementations.