scholarly journals A comprehensive set of global scenarios of housing, mobility, and material efficiency for material cycles and energy systems modelling

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomer Fishman ◽  
Niko Heeren ◽  
Stefan Pauliuk ◽  
Peter Berrill ◽  
Qingshi Tu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Energy Demand ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Industrial Ecology ◽  
Scenario Modeling ◽  
Material Efficiency ◽  
Energy Demands ◽  
Material Cycles ◽  
Systems Modelling ◽  
End Use ◽  
Scenario Formulation

Scenario-based assessments are a useful tool to explore unknown futures and inform decision makers and the general public of the consequences of different courses of action. Scenario developments in Industrial Ecology (IE) have focused on disparate components of the socioeconomic metabolism and case studies, and few efforts of comprehensive and cumulative scenario formulation are documented. Many important, empirically derived relationships between material cycles, end-use services, and energy use are relevant to global scenario modeling efforts, e.g. of integrated assessment models (IAMs), which do not routinely describe material cycles or the life-cycle impacts of various technology shifts. These gaps hinder the assessment of sustainable development strategies such as demand-side sufficiency, material efficiency, and energy efficiency. We developed scenarios for comprehensive assessment of material cycles and associated environmental impacts linked to demand for service provisioning of dwelling area and personal transport. We formulated three scenarios for 20 global regions based on the Low Energy Demand (LED) and Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP1 and SSP2) narratives with corresponding material efficiency strategy implementation potentials. While climate change mitigation scenarios are usually formulated as counterfactual scenarios, none of them center on service provision and material cycles at this level of detail. The explicit storyline extension approach presented here is a novel alternative to the aggregate GDP or time-driven extrapolations of service or energy demands. We describe the scenario formulation processes, resulting parameters, their applications, and offer an outlook for prospective sustainability models.

scholarly journals Overcooling of offices reveals gender inequity in thermal comfort

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Parkinson ◽  
Stefano Schiavon ◽  
Richard de Dear ◽  
Gail Brager
Keyword(s):  
Thermal Comfort ◽  
Energy Demand ◽  
Air Conditioning ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Office Buildings ◽  
Gender Inequity ◽  
End Use ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Survey Responses

AbstractGrowth in energy use for indoor cooling tripled between 1990 and 2016 to outpace any other end use in buildings. Part of this energy demand is wasted on excessive cooling of offices, a practice known as overcooling. Overcooling has been attributed to poorly designed or managed air-conditioning systems with thermostats that are often set below recommended comfort temperatures. Prior research has reported lower thermal comfort for women in office buildings, but there is insufficient evidence to explain the reasons for this disparity. We use two large and independent datasets from US buildings to show that office temperatures are less comfortable for women largely due to overcooling. Survey responses show that uncomfortable temperatures are more likely to be cold than hot regardless of season. Crowdsourced data suggests that overcooling is a common problem in warm weather in offices across the US. The associated impacts of this pervasive overcooling on well-being and performance are borne predominantly by women. The problem is likely to increase in the future due to growing demand for cooling in increasingly extreme climates. There is a need to rethink the approach to air-conditioning office buildings in light of this gender inequity caused by overcooling.

Scotland's energy demands

1987 ◽  
Vol 92 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 7-19
Author(s):  
D. J. Miller
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Total Energy ◽  
Energy Demand ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Present Position ◽  
Energy Demands ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Future ◽  
Recent Trends

SynopsisThe main features of energy demand in Scotland are described and compared, in respect of total energy use and the shares supplied by the different fuels, with the figures for the United Kingdom and other countries. Recent trends in demand are examined to illustrate how the present position has been reached and factors likely to influence each fuel's share in the future are outlined. The role of the energy industries themselves is discussed and the scope for new initiatives by these industries indicated.

scholarly journals Impacts of family household dynamics on residential energy demands in Hebei Province of China

Genus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi Zeng ◽  
Hanmo Yang ◽  
Zhenglian Wang ◽  
Lan Li
Keyword(s):  
Energy Demand ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Population Aging ◽  
Demographic Data ◽  
Hebei Province ◽  
Residential Energy ◽  
Population Changes ◽  
Older Parents ◽  
Energy Demands ◽  
The Future

AbstractThis article presents analyses and projections of the residential energy demands in Hebei Province of China, using the ProFamy extended cohort-component method and user-friendly free software and conventional demographic data as input. The results indicate that the future increase in residential energy demands will be dominated by large increase in small households with 1–2 persons. We found that increase of residential energy demands will be mainly driven by the rapid increase of older adults’ households. Comparisons between residential energy demand projections by household changes and by population changes demonstrate that projections by population changes seriously under-estimate the future residential energy demands. We recommend that China needs to adopt policies to encourage and facilitate older parents and adult children to live together or near-by, and support rural-to-urban family migration. Promoting inter-generation co-residence or living near-by between older parents and young adults would result in a mutually beneficial outcome for both older and younger generations as well as to effectively reduce energy demands. We suggest governments to carefully formulate strategies on efficient residential energy use to cope with the rapid households and population aging, and strengthen data collections/analyses on household residential energy demands for sound policy-making and sustainable development.

scholarly journals Towards an integrated multi-scale zero energy building framework for residential buildings

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Dekhani Juvenalis Dukakis Nsaliwa
Keyword(s):  
Energy Demand ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Residential Buildings ◽  
Embodied Energy ◽  
Energy Requirements ◽  
Zero Energy ◽  
Multi Scale ◽  
Energy Demands ◽  
Zero Energy Building ◽  
Operational Energy

<p>In most developed economies, buildings are directly and indirectly accountable for at least 40% of the final energy use. Consequently, most world cities are increasingly surpassing sensitive environmental boundaries and continue to reach critical biophysical thresholds. Climate change is one of the biggest threats humanity faces today and there is an urgent need to reduce energy use and CO₂ emissions globally to zero or to less than zero, to address climate change. This often leads to the assumption that buildings must reduce energy demand and emit radically less CO₂ during construction and occupation periods. Certainly, this is often implemented through delivering ‘zero energy buildings’. The deployment of residential buildings which meet the zero energy criteria thereby allowing neighbourhoods and cities to convert to semi-autonomous energy systems is seen to have a promising potential for reducing and even eliminating energy demand and the associated greenhouse gas emissions. However, most current zero energy building approaches focus solely on operational energy overlooking other energy uses such as embodied energy and user transport energy. Embodied energy constitutes all energy requirements for manufacturing building materials, construction and replacement. Transport energy comprises the amount of energy required to provide mobility services to building users.  Zero energy building design decisions based on partial evaluation and quantification approaches might result in an increased energy demand at different or multiple scales of the built environment. Indeed, recent studies have demonstrated that embodied and transport energy demands account for more than half of the total annual energy demand of residential buildings built based on zero energy criteria. Current zero energy building frameworks, tools and policies therefore may overlook more than ~80% of the total net energy balance annually.  The original contribution of this thesis is an integrated multi-scale zero energy building framework which has the capacity to gauge the relative effectiveness towards the deployment of zero energy residential buildings and neighbourhoods. This framework takes into account energy requirements and CO₂ emissions at the building scale, i.e. the embodied energy and operation energy demands, and at the city scale, i.e. the embodied energy of related transport modes including infrastructure and the transport operational energy demand of its users. This framework is implemented through the development of a quantification methodology which allows the analysis and evaluation of energy demand and CO₂ emissions pertaining to the deployment of zero energy residential buildings and districts. A case study, located in Auckland, New Zealand is used to verify, validate and investigate the potential of the developed framework.  Results confirm that each of the building (embodied and operational) and transport (embodied and operational) energy requirements represent a very significant share of the annual overall energy demand and associated CO₂ emissions of zero energy buildings. Consequently, rather than the respect of achieving a net zero energy building balance at the building scale, the research has revealed that it is more important, above all, to minimise building user-related and transportation energy demand at the city scale and maximise renewable energy production coupled with efficiency improvements at grid level. The application of the developed evaluation framework will enable building designers, urban planners, researchers and policy makers to deliver effective multi-scale zero energy building strategies which will ultimately contribute to reducing the overall environmental impact of the built environment today.</p>

The Path Forward

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hewitt Crane ◽  
Edwin Kinderman ◽  
Ripudaman Malhotra
Keyword(s):  
Energy Demand ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Economies Of Scale ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Global Energy ◽  
Energy Demands ◽  
Energy Flows ◽  
Global Energy Supply ◽  
Supply Systems ◽  
Energy Supply Systems

In this book we reviewed the course of energy consumption over the ages and projected the level of consumption through 2050. To facilitate the discussion, we introduced a new unit of energy—a cubic mile of oil equivalent, or CMO—that enables description of global energy flows in terms and numbers that are immediately comprehensible. We surveyed the various sources of energy in current use, established the quantities used, and projected our future needs on a global basis. While for much of our history the availability of energy has played an important role in determining the potentials and abilities of humans, in recent times energy has become much more important because resources are coming under strain. Greater energy use is beginning to influence our environment more strongly than ever before. A characteristic of global energy supply systems is the slowness with which they can shift. The slowness is a consequence of several factors. The size of the incumbent technologies and the advantage that they have in terms of learned improvements, economies of scale, and delivery infrastructure, play an important role in the rate at which new technologies are adopted. New technologies are often more expensive simply because cost reductions occur with experience, and it takes time for something new to penetrate the markets and build an experience base. Government subsidies and research and development (R&D) investments can help break this vicious cycle, but in the end the technologies have to deliver value to the customers before they can be adopted widely. There are also limited numbers of manufacturing and delivery systems in place for new technologies. Because basic energy supplies adapt slowly to change—as do most technologies—while energy demand grows more rapidly with population and income, we must act now to bring new supplies and new patterns of energy demand into play to meet the projected global energy demands of mid 21st century. Time is of the essence! Abundant energy has become an essential part of modern life, and we cannot go without it if we wish to retain even a small fraction of our current civilization.

scholarly journals Towards an integrated multi-scale zero energy building framework for residential buildings

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Dekhani Juvenalis Dukakis Nsaliwa
Keyword(s):  
Energy Demand ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Residential Buildings ◽  
Embodied Energy ◽  
Energy Requirements ◽  
Zero Energy ◽  
Multi Scale ◽  
Energy Demands ◽  
Zero Energy Building ◽  
Operational Energy

<p>In most developed economies, buildings are directly and indirectly accountable for at least 40% of the final energy use. Consequently, most world cities are increasingly surpassing sensitive environmental boundaries and continue to reach critical biophysical thresholds. Climate change is one of the biggest threats humanity faces today and there is an urgent need to reduce energy use and CO₂ emissions globally to zero or to less than zero, to address climate change. This often leads to the assumption that buildings must reduce energy demand and emit radically less CO₂ during construction and occupation periods. Certainly, this is often implemented through delivering ‘zero energy buildings’. The deployment of residential buildings which meet the zero energy criteria thereby allowing neighbourhoods and cities to convert to semi-autonomous energy systems is seen to have a promising potential for reducing and even eliminating energy demand and the associated greenhouse gas emissions. However, most current zero energy building approaches focus solely on operational energy overlooking other energy uses such as embodied energy and user transport energy. Embodied energy constitutes all energy requirements for manufacturing building materials, construction and replacement. Transport energy comprises the amount of energy required to provide mobility services to building users.  Zero energy building design decisions based on partial evaluation and quantification approaches might result in an increased energy demand at different or multiple scales of the built environment. Indeed, recent studies have demonstrated that embodied and transport energy demands account for more than half of the total annual energy demand of residential buildings built based on zero energy criteria. Current zero energy building frameworks, tools and policies therefore may overlook more than ~80% of the total net energy balance annually.  The original contribution of this thesis is an integrated multi-scale zero energy building framework which has the capacity to gauge the relative effectiveness towards the deployment of zero energy residential buildings and neighbourhoods. This framework takes into account energy requirements and CO₂ emissions at the building scale, i.e. the embodied energy and operation energy demands, and at the city scale, i.e. the embodied energy of related transport modes including infrastructure and the transport operational energy demand of its users. This framework is implemented through the development of a quantification methodology which allows the analysis and evaluation of energy demand and CO₂ emissions pertaining to the deployment of zero energy residential buildings and districts. A case study, located in Auckland, New Zealand is used to verify, validate and investigate the potential of the developed framework.  Results confirm that each of the building (embodied and operational) and transport (embodied and operational) energy requirements represent a very significant share of the annual overall energy demand and associated CO₂ emissions of zero energy buildings. Consequently, rather than the respect of achieving a net zero energy building balance at the building scale, the research has revealed that it is more important, above all, to minimise building user-related and transportation energy demand at the city scale and maximise renewable energy production coupled with efficiency improvements at grid level. The application of the developed evaluation framework will enable building designers, urban planners, researchers and policy makers to deliver effective multi-scale zero energy building strategies which will ultimately contribute to reducing the overall environmental impact of the built environment today.</p>

scholarly journals Evaluación de la demanda energética de edificios no residenciales en Escocia = Energy demand benchmarking of non-domestic buildings in Scotland

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Julien Chetboula ◽  
Céline Garnier ◽  
Julio Bros-Williamson
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Emissions ◽  
Energy Demand ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Residential Buildings ◽  
Energy Performance ◽  
Building Stock ◽  
Occupancy Patterns ◽  
Energy Use Intensity ◽  
End Use ◽  
The Uk

ResumenCon los años el rendimiento energético del edificio se ha convertido en una preocupación predominante para los propietarios y administradores de bienes raíces. La atención se centra generalmente en edificios de viviendas, pero en los últimos veinte años un interés en edificios no residenciales ha surgido en el Reino Unido. Los puntos de referencia general se pueden encontrar a escala del Reino Unido, aunque a menudo está restringido a Inglaterra y Gales. Este documento tiene como objetivo proporcionar puntos de referencia para el parque inmobiliario no doméstico escocés como parte del Ayuntamiento de Edimburgo. En esta investigación, la muestra seleccionada incluye datos de energía y las emisiones de carbono calculadas de 199 edificios.Los parámetros decisivos fueron la intensidad de uso de la energía (kWh/m2) y el uso y la edad de los edificios. Esto permitió la creación de seis tipos de edificios, aunque siguiendo patrones de ocupación se dividió en cuatro categorías desde el s. XVI hasta el s. XXI. Los principales resultados revelan el predominio de un clúster de edificios educativos en términos de superficie (72%), el número de edificios (70%), las emisiones de carbono (68% de los cerca de 42.000 toneladas de CO2) y el consumo de energía (61% de la 38,4 MWh de electricidad consumida, y el 73% del 117,4 MWh de gas natural que se consume). Entre estos niveles de consumo destacan el potencial de ahorro de energía para las escuelas: 186 kWh / m2 / año en promedio, en comparación con la media europea de 100 kWh / m2 / año de energía térmica de uso final. AbstractOver the years building energy performance has become a predominant concern for owners and real estate managers. The focus is usually on residential buildings but in the last twenty years an interest in non-domestic buildings has emerged in the UK. Benchmarks can generally be found at UK scale, although often restricted to England and Wales. This paper aims to provide benchmarks for the Scottish non-domestic building stock as part of the City of Edinburgh Council estate. In this research, the selected sample includes energy data and calculated carbon emissions of 199 buildings. The deciding parameters were the energy use intensity (kWh/m2) and the use and age of buildings. The last two allowed the creation of six clusters in which to group buildings of similar occupancy patterns in four age categories from the 16th to the 21st century. The main findings reveal the predominance of an educational buildings cluster in terms of floor area (72%), number of buildings (70%), carbon emissions (68% of about 42,000 tons of CO2), and energy consumption (61% of the 38.4 MWh of electricity consumed, and 73% of the 117.4 MWh of natural gas consumed). These levels of consumption highlight the energy saving potential for schools: 186 kWh/m2/year on average, in comparison with the European average of 100 kWh/m2/year for thermal end-use energy.

scholarly journals Experimental Data and Simulations of Performance and Thermal Comfort in a Typical Mediterranean House

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (11) ◽  
pp. 3311
Author(s):  
Víctor Pérez-Andreu ◽  
Carolina Aparicio-Fernández ◽  
José-Luis Vivancos ◽  
Javier Cárcel-Carrasco
Keyword(s):  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Thermal Comfort ◽  
Energy Demand ◽  
Natural Ventilation ◽  
Thermal Characterization ◽  
Energy Performance ◽  
Building Stock ◽  
Energy Demands ◽  
Dwelling House ◽  
Account Standard

The number of buildings renovated following the introduction of European energy-efficiency policy represents a small number of buildings in Spain. So, the main Spanish building stock needs an urgent energy renovation. Using passive strategies is essential, and thermal characterization and predictive tests of the energy-efficiency improvements achieving acceptable levels of comfort for their users are urgently necessary. This study analyzes the energy performance and thermal comfort of the users in a typical Mediterranean dwelling house. A transient simulation has been used to acquire the scope of Spanish standards for its energy rehabilitation, taking into account standard comfort conditions. The work is based on thermal monitoring of the building and a numerical validated model developed in TRNSYS. Energy demands for different models have been calculated considering different passive constructive measures combined with real wind site conditions and the behavior of users related to natural ventilation. This methodology has given us the necessary information to decide the best solution in relation to energy demand and facility of implementation. The thermal comfort for different models is not directly related to energy demand and has allowed checking when and where the measures need to be done.

scholarly journals Overheating Risk and Energy Demand of Nordic Old and New Apartment Buildings during Average and Extreme Weather Conditions under a Changing Climate

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 3972
Author(s):  
Azin Velashjerdi Farahani ◽  
Juha Jokisalo ◽  
Natalia Korhonen ◽  
Kirsti Jylhä ◽  
Kimmo Ruosteenoja ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Energy Demand ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Residential Buildings ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Extreme Weather ◽  
Living Room ◽  
Extra Energy ◽  
Cooling Unit ◽  
Indoor Conditions

The global average air temperature is increasing as a manifestation of climate change and more intense and frequent heatwaves are expected to be associated with this rise worldwide, including northern Europe. Summertime indoor conditions in residential buildings and the health of occupants are influenced by climate change, particularly if no mechanical cooling is used. The energy use of buildings contributes to climate change through greenhouse gas emissions. It is, therefore, necessary to analyze the effects of climate change on the overheating risk and energy demand of residential buildings and to assess the efficiency of various measures to alleviate the overheating. In this study, simulations of dynamic energy and indoor conditions in a new and an old apartment building are performed using two climate scenarios for southern Finland, one for average and the other for extreme weather conditions in 2050. The evaluated measures against overheating included orientations, blinds, site shading, window properties, openable windows, the split cooling unit, and the ventilation cooling and ventilation boost. In both buildings, the overheating risk is high in the current and projected future average climate and, in particular, during exceptionally hot summers. The indoor conditions are occasionally even injurious for the health of occupants. The openable windows and ventilation cooling with ventilation boost were effective in improving the indoor conditions, during both current and future average and extreme weather conditions. However, the split cooling unit installed in the living room was the only studied solution able to completely prevent overheating in all the spaces with a fairly small amount of extra energy usage.

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