Abstract: All forms of economic production and exchange involve the use of energy directly and in the transformation of materials. Until recently, cheap and seemingly limitless fossil energy has allowed most of society to ignore the importance of contributions to the economic process from the biophysical world as well as the potential limits to growth. This paper centres on assessing the energy costs of modern day society and its relation to GDP.

Mandatory civil building energy efficiency codes strictly govern the energy consumption of new buildings in China. As the promotion of building energy efficiency in China has increased in recent years, compliance with mandatory civil building energy efficiency codes has also improved, increasing from less than 10% in 2000 to nearly 100% in 2012, a remarkable achievement. However, because the promotion of energy efficiency strategies in China has followed a unique pattern, some researchers doubt these statistics.

Building sector accounts for a large percentage of the total national energy consumption in most of the countries, thus it is critical to formulate and implement appropriate energy saving policies in the building sector. This paper focuses on energy saving policies in the building sector by conducting a comparative study between Japan and China. The exiting Building Energy Saving (BES) policies, actual effectiveness of policy implementation and obstacles to the effective policy implementation are compared in sequence.

This paper quantifies the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions co-benefits associated with water, waste and transportation usage in certified green commercial office buildings in California. The study compares the measured values of water, waste and transportation usage self-reported by office buildings certified under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system for Existing Building Operations and Maintenance (LEED EBOM) to baseline values of conventional California office buildings.

The United States (US) Clean Power Plan established state-specific carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reduction goals for fossil fuel-fired electricity generating units (EGUs). States may achieve these goals through multiple mechanisms, including measures that can achieve equivalent CO2 reductions such as residential energy efficiency, which will have important co-benefits. Here, we develop state-resolution simulations of the economic, health, and climate benefits of increased residential insulation, considering EGUs and residential combustion.

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.

In Europe, the latest updates in the directive on the energy performance of buildings introduced two fundamental concepts, namely the cost-optimal energy requirements and the nearly-zero energy buildings (nZEB). Although these concepts are related, the cost-optimal is focused on costs while the nZEB prioritise the energy performance and the use of renewable energy harvested on site.

Regulations governing the energy efficiency of new buildings have become a cornerstone of US environmental policy. California enacted the first such codes in 1978 and has tightened them every few years since. I evaluate the resulting energy savings three ways: comparing energy used by houses constructed under different standards, controlling for building and occupant characteristics; examining how energy use varies with outdoor temperatures; and comparing energy used by houses of different vintages in California to that same difference in other states.

Global population ageing has significant implications for public policy in areas such as health, housing and economic security. The notion of housing as a public health issue is not new, yet very little research has examined the links between housing specifically built for older people, energy performance and occupant health and economic security.

In summary: 

1. As a result of Colombia’s new green codes, buildings are expected to consume 10 to 45 percent less energy and water. These reductions will avoid nearly 190,000 metric tons of greenhouse-gas emissions by 2021, helping big cities like Bogota achieve a goal to reduce 2019’s greenhouse-gas emissions by 16 percent compared to 2007.2,3

To maximise the benefits from its application of BIM to infrastructure projects within its annual capital program, this framework will support the effective use of BIM across Queensland Government infrastructure delivery agencies. A focus of the framework includes BIM capability development across government and industry.

Abstract

USGBC local communities around the country are helping cities jumpstart their building performance benchmarking efforts. And the results are pretty exciting. After four years of benchmarking in New York City, buildings there are using almost 15 percent less energy according to MIT professor David Hsu, one of the most widely recognized experts in energy benchmarking analysis. Learn more in this Benchmarking in Cities brief.

Sustainability assessment tools aim to promote high sustainability outcomes in residential buildings, ensuring less consumption of water, energy and less emission of greenhouse gases. However, existing literature often presents variations between the estimated outcomes from the assessment tools and actual outcomes after building occupation. Research suggests that actual energy consumption could be significantly influenced by resident behaviour in addition to the dwelling conditions and the energy efficiency of appliances.

Nigerian government has begun to develop plans that will address green buildings and environmental sustainability, a matter and issue on which Malaysia has wide-ranging experiences. Through a comparative study on green building policies in Malaysia and Nigeria, the study identified important lessons relevant to Nigeria green building policies and programmes and creates a general explanation of Malaysia green building policies that could be applicable to Nigeria.

Green building assessment methods, which play an essential role in promoting the development of greenbuildings, have attracted much attention in recent years. Many studies have been conducted on the development of new assessment methods and improvement of existing ones through comparative analysis. However, there is no comprehensive study that explicitly explores these efforts. For this purpose, a systematic review of the existing literature on green building assessment methods through comparative analysis is carried out in this paper.

Potential gains from improving energy efficiency are substantial — not only in terms of saving energy and combating climate change, but also in terms of contributing to an array of other co-benefits, including improving human health and creating jobs. We asked Tim Farrell, Senior Advisor at the Copenhagen Centre on Energy Efficiency, what works best when it comes to boosting energy efficiency. He stressed that targeted policy measures and sufficient resources to support implementation and compliance are among a number of critical ingredients for success.

The rationale for energy efficiency policy can be framed in terms of a variety of different benefits. This paper considers how different benefits have been used within the overall rationale for energy efficient retrofit policy in different contexts. We posit that different rationales may be used for the same policy response, and that the form of rationale used may affect the design, delivery or the level of policy support, with different rationales making it easier to account for different results.

The reduction of the energy consumption and carbon emissions in the building sector is an important target for actions to mitigate the climate changes and different actions are being carried out to promote a transition to a low carbon built environment. However, present standards are mainly focused on new buildings which may result counter-productive in existing ones, due to their technical, functional and economic constraints.

Political jurisdictions in the United States have begun to develop plans that address green buildings, a topic on which the Netherlands has extensive experience. This article analyzes the literature on Dutch green buildings to look for lessons that might be relevant for the development of polices in the United States. Through a metasynthesis of seventeen studies on green building policies in the Netherlands, the study identifies patterns in the literature and creates a holistic interpretation.