scholarly journals The climate and health benefits from intensive building energy efficiency improvements

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (34) ◽  
pp. eabg0947
Author(s):  
Kenneth T. Gillingham ◽  
Pei Huang ◽  
Colby Buehler ◽  
Jordan Peccia ◽  
Drew R. Gentner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Indoor Air Quality ◽  
Indoor Air ◽  
Carbon Dioxide Emissions ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Building Energy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Building Energy Efficiency

Intensive building energy efficiency improvements can reduce emissions from energy use, improving outdoor air quality and human health, but may also affect ventilation and indoor air quality. This study examines the effects of highly ambitious, yet feasible, building energy efficiency upgrades in the United States. Our energy efficiency scenarios, derived from the literature, lead to a 6 to 11% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions and 18 to 25% reductions in particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions in 2050. These reductions are complementary with a carbon pricing policy on electricity. However, our results also point to the importance of mitigating indoor PM2.5 emissions, improving PM2.5 filtration, and evaluating ventilation-related policies. Even with no further ventilation improvements, we estimate that intensive energy efficiency scenarios could prevent 1800 to 3600 premature deaths per year across the United States in 2050. With further investments in indoor air quality, this can rise to 2900 to 5100.

FINDING EVIDENCE OF GREEN LEASING IN UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT-LEASED PROPERTIES

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-72
Author(s):  
Eunhwa Yang ◽  
Juan Sebastian Guevara-Ramirez ◽  
Catherine Bisson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Building Energy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Commercial Real Estate ◽  
United States Government ◽  
Building Energy Efficiency ◽  
Legal Provisions ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Building Owner

ABSTRACT Although the term “green leasing” is not yet well defined, its primary purpose is clear. With an aim to create a collaborative environment through legal provisions between a building owner and a tenant, green leasing may ultimately help resolve the energy paradox in tenanted properties. Issues surrounding split-incentives are driven by a mismatch between owners' capital expenditures on improving building energy efficiency and an uncertainty of tenant or occupant behavior that might affect a building's energy consumption. Though some countries have started to develop guidelines promoting the adoption of green leasing, especially in government buildings and commercial real estate, implementation has not been overly successful globally. This study has two focuses, the first of which is to compare green leasing guidelines from various countries and to suggest six comprehensive categories of green leasing components: management relationships, information sharing, certificates, legal stipulations, financial factors, and operation. The second core area of research places government-tenanted properties' lease agreement contracts. The goal is to find any evidence in a legal condition between a building owner and a tenant, in this case federal government, to improve building energy efficiency with less environmental impact in the United States. The findings of the study indicated 41 out of 400 leases had green clauses. Three out of six categories proposed in this study were found in the U.S. government-tenanted properties, while the other three types were not shown. The findings of this study also suggest categories of green leasing clauses can contribute to defining green leasing and provide empirical evidence of green leasing in governmenttenanted properties. Ultimately, this study produces arguments for possible reasoning behind the employment of some green lease categories but the lack of use of others, specifically in the U.S. office market and government-tenanted buildings.

scholarly journals An Investigation on Natural Window Ventilation: Improving Indoor Air Quality and Energy Efficiency in an Office Building

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emine Şen ◽  
◽  
Touraj Ashrafian ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Indoor Air Quality ◽  
Air Temperature ◽  
Indoor Air ◽  
Natural Ventilation ◽  
Indoor Air Pollution ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Office Building ◽  
Building Energy Efficiency

With the increment in time spent indoors, the contingence between building occupants and indoor air pollution has been lengthened. Accordingly, indoor air quality became a significant factor since the poor conditions can influence the occupants’ health and efficiency. Indoor air quality is mainly concerned with physical and thermophysical factors in conditioned environments and is related to occupants’ satisfaction levels on a variety of variables such as fresh air adequacy, air temperature, odor, humidity, and air velocity. This paper aims to investigate natural ventilation occupant-control methods to improve indoor air quality and increase building energy efficiency considering clean air intake levels and indoor air temperature levels. For this, variables related to climatic conditions, ventilation systems, and occupant’s control on window opening were investigated to provide healthy and liveable conditions. To comply with these goals, in an open-plan office building, the levels of indoor air quality were determined with the help of DesignBuilder simulation by comparing obtained values under different case modeling variations.

Energy Use and Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Cropland Production in the United States, 1990-2004

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.G. Nelson, ◽  
C.H. Hellwinckel, ◽  
C.C. Brandt, ◽  
T.O. West, ◽  
D.G. De La Torre Ugarte, ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Carbon Dioxide Emissions ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
The United States

scholarly journals The Dichotomy between Indoor Air Quality and Energy Efficiency in Light of the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 791
Author(s):  
Gaetano Settimo ◽  
Pasquale Avino
Keyword(s):  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Indoor Air Quality ◽  
Indoor Air ◽  
Great Increase

Recently, there has been a great increase in the importance of issues related to energy efficiency [...]

scholarly journals Energy Efficiency – Indoor Air Quality Dilemma in Educational Buildings: A Possible Solution

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 357-367
Author(s):  
Liva Asere ◽  
Andra Blumberga
Keyword(s):  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Renewable Energy ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Indoor Air Quality ◽  
Indoor Air ◽  
Renewable Energy Sources ◽  
Energy Sources ◽  
Pv System ◽  
Educational Buildings ◽  
Electricity Tariff

AbstractThe energy efficiency – indoor air quality dilemma is well known and the main drawback to operate the mechanical ventilation is electricity costs as concluded from previous studies. Educational buildings are one of the places where future taxpayers spend a lot of time. This paper aims to study an alternative solution on how to reduce energy efficiency – indoor air quality dilemma in educational buildings by adopting systems that use renewable energy sources. A typical education building in Latvia is taken as a case study by changing it from a consumer to prosumer. This building type has a specific electricity usage profile that makes the choice of photovoltaics (PV) power quite challenging so the various power options have been analysed and used for an electricity solution. Also, the more decentralised preference is chosen – disconnect from a public heating provider and using a local system with a pellet boiler. Educational buildings using PV can reduce the electricity tariff, but the payback periods are still not very satisfactory without subsidies. The average electricity tariff per month varies between scenarios and the best one is for the scenario with 30 kW installed power. The educational building partly using 16 kW PV system reduces not only its bill for electricity but also reduces CO2 emissions by around 36 tons. The education buildings as energy prosumers using renewable energy sources are reducing GHG emissions by having high indoor air quality.

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