Energy is a complicated topic, and energy performance can also be challenging to determine. This book is about understanding and shaping energy performance of an entire economic sector, using the residential sector as the example, although not at a detailed level. The historical record of attempts to reduce energy use or carbon emissions of countries and the world is primarily one of failure. Should the response to continued failure be to continue to do more of the same? Insanity is sometimes defined in such a manner.

Green Public Procurement (GPP) is an important tool to achieve environmental policy goals relating to climate change, resource use and sustainable consumption and production – especially given the importance of public sector spending on goods and services in Europe.

Policies that promote green growth need to be founded on a good understanding of the determinants of green growth and need to be supported with appropriate indicators to monitor progress. This book is an update of the 2014 edition.

Delivering the quality of growth to which citizens aspire requires concerted action across countries and within ministries invested in green growth – finance, economy, industry, trade and agriculture, among others.

Economic development will lead to higher demand for various end-use goods and services in India. Energy-efficient technologies provide a way forward to achieve economic growth at relatively lower costs due to associated multiple benefits such as resource conservation, lower energy consumption, higher productivity and lower emissions intensity per unit of output.

The report undertakes the following analysis to identify High Impact Opportunities (HIOs):

China has made energy conservation and energy efficiency one of its top priorities as a means of guiding its economic and social development. In the past three decades, while China’s economy increased eighteen‑fold, energy consumption increased only five‑fold. The energy intensity of China’s GDP declined by about seventy percent during the same period. In the face of resource and environmental constraints, China vowed to make energy conservation a foundation of its economic and social development strategy, as well as its energy and climate change strategy.

This book uses energy and economic models to assess the potential for further energy-efficient improvements in the transport, building, industry and power sectors of China. The report starts with a modelling assessment of the role of energy efficiency in supporting China to achieve its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) of reaching a peak in its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by around 2030.

The growing per capita income in India is expected to increase the demand for various energy-consuming products and services among Indian households. Enhancing energy efficiency remains one of the cheapest options to “produce” energy in India, as the efficiency of many energy systems has a large scope for improvement, and as this option plays an important part in enhancing India’s energy security.