BUILDING OUR SAVINGS: REDUCED INFRASTRUCTURE COSTS FROM IMPROVING BUILDING ENERGY EFFICIENCY
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Institute for Sustainable Futures, Energetics
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. lighting, Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC), water heating, appliances) and impact on electricity and gas peak demand in critical summer and winter seasons, when energy systems are most constrained.This analysis establishes projected energy uses in residential, commercial and industrial buildings in 2020, then models the total energy savings achievable from a specified suite of building Energy Savings Measures (ESMs). It then estimates the peak demand impact of those energy savings by taking into account the time of day and year that those savings occur (for electricity, this means determining the megawatts (MW) of peak demand reduced for every megawatt hour (MWh) of energy saved).The second work package quantifies the marginal costs of energy supply in the generation/production and delivery of gas and electricity to the consumer, by researching the historical and proposed infrastructure investment over the next five years, and projecting these annually out to 2020. Combining these packages then enabled the quantification of the potential infrastructure savings achievable through energy efficiency measures in buildings.