scholarly journals A Complementary Approach to Traditional Energy Balances for Assessing Energy Efficiency Measures in Final Uses: The Case of Space Heating and Cooling in Argentina

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (16) ◽  
pp. 6563
Author(s):  
Roque G Stagnitta ◽  
Matteo V Rocco ◽  
Emanuela Colombo

Energy balances have been historically conceived based on a supply-side perspective, providing neither detailed information about energy conversion into useful services nor the effects that may be induced by the application of policies in other sectors to energy consumption. This article proposes an approach to a thorough assessment of the impact of efficiency policies on final energy uses, focusing on residential space heating and cooling, and capable of: (1) quantifying final useful services provided and (2) accounting for the global impact of efficiency policies on final energy use, taking advantage of Input–Output analysis. This approach is applied in five cities of Argentina. Firstly, the quantity of energy service provided (i.e., level of thermal comfort) for each city is evaluated and compared with the defined target. It is found out that heating comfort is guaranteed approximately as established, whereas in the cooling case the provision is twice the established level. Secondly, primary energy consumption of heating and cooling services is evaluated before and after different efficiency improvement policies. The results show that the major primary energy saving (52%) is obtained from the upgrading appliances scenario and reflect the importance of accounting for embodied energy in goods and services involved in interventions.

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (16) ◽  
pp. 4805
Author(s):  
Shu Chen ◽  
Zhengen Ren ◽  
Zhi Tang ◽  
Xianrong Zhuo

Globally, buildings account for nearly 40% of the total primary energy consumption and are responsible for 20% of the total greenhouse gas emissions. Energy consumption in buildings is increasing with the increasing world population and improving standards of living. Current global warming conditions will inevitably impact building energy consumption. To address this issue, this report conducted a comprehensive study of the impact of climate change on residential building energy consumption. Using the methodology of morphing, the weather files were constructed based on the typical meteorological year (TMY) data and predicted data generated from eight typical global climate models (GCMs) for three representative concentration pathways (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5) from 2020 to 2100. It was found that the most severe situation would occur in scenario RCP8.5, where the increase in temperature will reach 4.5 °C in eastern Australia from 2080–2099, which is 1 °C higher than that in other climate zones. With the construction of predicted weather files in 83 climate zones all across Australia, ten climate zones (cities)—ranging from heating-dominated to cooling-dominated regions—were selected as representative climate zones to illustrate the impact of climate change on heating and cooling energy consumption. The quantitative change in the energy requirements for space heating and cooling, along with the star rating, was simulated for two representative detached houses using the AccuRate software. It could be concluded that the RCP scenarios significantly affect the energy loads, which is consistent with changes in the ambient temperature. The heating load decreases for all climate zones, while the cooling load increases. Most regions in Australia will increase their energy consumption due to rising temperatures; however, the energy requirements of Adelaide and Perth would not change significantly, where the space heating and cooling loads are balanced due to decreasing heating and increasing cooling costs in most scenarios. The energy load in bigger houses will change more than that in smaller houses. Furthermore, Brisbane is the most sensitive region in terms of relative space energy changes, and Townsville appears to be the most sensitive area in terms of star rating change in this study. The impact of climate change on space building energy consumption in different climate zones should be considered in future design strategies due to the decades-long lifespans of Australian residential houses.


Author(s):  
Swapan Saha ◽  
Dharma Hagare ◽  
Jiaqi Zhou ◽  
Md Kamrul Hassan

Space cooling and heating in residential sector is significant contributor to energy consumption in Australia. Therefore, it is important to reduce the cooling and heating requirements. The selection of a good walling system helps to save energy by homes. This research compared the thermal efficiency of a modern house (constructed using brick veneer walls with concrete floor slab) with an old house (constructed using fibro cement walls raised timber floor) using the AccuRate simulation tool. A standard house with two living rooms, one kitchen, one laundry and four bedrooms are simulated in a Sydney Suburb in Australia. It was found that modern house showed lower inside temperature variation than the old house all year around. The results also showed that the modern house has a lower energy consumption for space heating and cooling than the old house. The annual energy use for space heating and cooling in both the modern house and old house were 5197 kWh and 15,712 kWh respectively. Moreover, the annual energy costs were found to be $1,403 and $4,242 respectively for modern and old houses. The modern brick veneer house saved about 33 % of energy compared to old old house. When the net present value of the energy cost for f both houses over 50 years is computed, the energy cost of modern house was found to be $25,629 while it of old house is was $77,488 for the old house.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (21) ◽  
pp. 8998
Author(s):  
Sebastian Czernik ◽  
Marta Marcinek ◽  
Bartosz Michałowski ◽  
Michał Piasecki ◽  
Justyna Tomaszewska ◽  
...  

Energy saving is one of the strategic challenges facing our civilization today. Without decisive actions to reduce energy consumption, it is impossible to maintain the current standard of living. Energy consumption for heating and cooling purposes is one of the primary energy consumption sources in many countries. The external thermal insulation composite system (ETICS), which is today the most widely used solution in EU countries, increases buildings’ energy efficiency. This article investigates the impact of producing cementitious adhesives, as part of ETICS with expanded polystyrene (EPS) or mineral wool (MW), on the natural environment using the cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment (LCA) method. Cementitious adhesives have a relatively low impact on most of the environmental indicators analyzed in the paper concerning other ETICS components. The paper aims to raise awareness of the importance of the environmental impact related to the production of cementitious adhesives. Knowledge of the construction products’ environmental impact is fundamental for creating reliable databases, based on which, in the future, their environmental requirements will be determined. The environmental performance of building elements is essential for the correct determination of the buildings’ sustainability.


2021 ◽  
Vol 246 ◽  
pp. 04003
Author(s):  
Kristofersen, by Hans Smedsrud ◽  
Kai Xue ◽  
Zhirong Yang ◽  
Liv-Inger Stenstad ◽  
Tor Emil Giske ◽  
...  

The objective of this study is to evaluate and predict the energy use in different buildings during COVID-19 pandemic period at St. Olavs Hospital in Trondheim. Based on machine learning, operational data from St. Olavs hospital combined with weather data will be used to predict energy use for the hospital. Analysis of the energy data showed that the case buildings at the hospital did not have any different energy use during the pandemic this year compared to the same period last year, except for the lab center. The energy consumption of electricity, heating and cooling is very similar both in 2019 and 2020 for all buildings, but in 2020 during the pandemic, the lab center had a reduction of 35% in electricity, compared to last year. An analysis of the energy needed for heating and cooling in the end of June to the end of November was also calculated for operating room 1 and was estimated to 256 kWh/m2 for operation room 1. The machine learning algorithms perform very well to predict the energy consumption of case buildings, Random Forest and AdaBoost proves as the best models, with less than 10% margin of error, some of the models have only 4% error. An analysis of the effect of humidification of ventilation air on energy consumption in operating room 1 was also carried out. The impact on energy consumption were high in winter and will at the coldest periods be able to double the energy consumption needed in the ventilation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (Suppl. 5) ◽  
pp. 1719-1726
Author(s):  
Dusan Gordic ◽  
Jelena Nikolic ◽  
Vladimir Vukasinovic

The implications of global warming on energy uses for heating and cooling in buildings are analysed in the paper. The research methodology is based on monitoring data on average daily temperature variation during a certain period and expected future temperature variation of existing mean daily temperatures according to a certain climate model. Developed model also uses the current real energy consumption of public buildings at a location and envisaged variation of cooling and heating degree day influenced by global warming. Based on the model, authors examine the influence of global warming on primary energy consumption for heating and cooling in public buildings in a city of Kragujevac, Serbia. The results show that a consequence of global warming should be a significant reduction of total primary energy consumption for heating and cooling in the public buildings. Possible increase in mean annual temperature of 3.8?C till the end of the century has an impact to the reduction of primary energy use for heating for 35.7% in public buildings in Kragujevac, while predicted consumption of primary energy for cooling will be almost five times higher than nowadays.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 368-374
Author(s):  
Prerana Tuladhar

Energy is one of the crucial aspects now-a-days to be considered from the household chores to the educational, transportation, industrial and many other sectors. Apart from cooking, space heating and cooling also have greater impact as buildings consume about 40% of world’s energy use and major part of energy is used for space heating and cooling [1]. Gender is another aspect that should be taken in to consideration in the energy sector. Discrimination between men and women, either it may be in the knowledge regarding energy sector, profession, application and practices etc. is seen in our society. Therefore, this paper seeks to investigate the impacts of space heating and cooling in the energy consumption pattern of Residential buildings. This paper explores how the gender issues in the energy sector can be addressed and how can it lead towards the sustainable development of the society and then nation. At the same time, paper highlights the changes and improvements in the energy consumption pattern with the enrollment of women in the energy sector. The conclusions are derived from the several literature studies and explorative data analysis with the concern of gender relation with the energy efficiency in the space heating and cooling of residential buildings.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (13) ◽  
pp. 3876
Author(s):  
Sameh Monna ◽  
Adel Juaidi ◽  
Ramez Abdallah ◽  
Aiman Albatayneh ◽  
Patrick Dutournie ◽  
...  

Since buildings are one of the major contributors to global warming, efforts should be intensified to make them more energy-efficient, particularly existing buildings. This research intends to analyze the energy savings from a suggested retrofitting program using energy simulation for typical existing residential buildings. For the assessment of the energy retrofitting program using computer simulation, the most commonly utilized residential building types were selected. The energy consumption of those selected residential buildings was assessed, and a baseline for evaluating energy retrofitting was established. Three levels of retrofitting programs were implemented. These levels were ordered by cost, with the first level being the least costly and the third level is the most expensive. The simulation models were created for two different types of buildings in three different climatic zones in Palestine. The findings suggest that water heating, space heating, space cooling, and electric lighting are the highest energy consumers in ordinary houses. Level one measures resulted in a 19–24 percent decrease in energy consumption due to reduced heating and cooling loads. The use of a combination of levels one and two resulted in a decrease of energy consumption for heating, cooling, and lighting by 50–57%. The use of the three levels resulted in a decrease of 71–80% in total energy usage for heating, cooling, lighting, water heating, and air conditioning.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 6192
Author(s):  
Junghwan Lee ◽  
Jinsoo Kim

This study analyzes the changes in energy consumption of the Korean manufacturing sector using the index decomposition analysis (IDA) method. To capture the production effect based on actual physical activities, we applied the activity revaluation (AR) approach in the analysis. We also developed energy consumption data in terms of primary energy supply to consider conversion loss in the energy sector to avoid any distortions in the intensity effect. The analysis covers every manufacturing subsector in Korea over the period between 2006 and 2018. Combining two distinctive approaches from the previous literature, the AR approach and primary energy-based analysis gives us helpful findings for a climate policy. First, the overall activity effect estimated from the physical output indicator is lower than that from the monetary output indicator. The monetary indicator shows that the share of energy-intensive industries decreases, whereas the physical indicator shows the opposite. Second, in terms of energy efficiency, the intensity effect is estimated as an increasing factor of energy use, whereas inversed results are shown when we use the monetary indicator. Lastly, unlike the previous studies, the AR approach results indicate that Korean manufacturing sectors have been shifting toward an energy-intensive, so it is hard to anticipate positive intensity effects, which means decreasing energy consumption factor, for a while. These results support why analyzing the driving forces of energy consumption through the AR approach and primary energy base is highly recommended.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1595
Author(s):  
Valeria Todeschi ◽  
Roberto Boghetti ◽  
Jérôme H. Kämpf ◽  
Guglielmina Mutani

Building energy-use models and tools can simulate and represent the distribution of energy consumption of buildings located in an urban area. The aim of these models is to simulate the energy performance of buildings at multiple temporal and spatial scales, taking into account both the building shape and the surrounding urban context. This paper investigates existing models by simulating the hourly space heating consumption of residential buildings in an urban environment. Existing bottom-up urban-energy models were applied to the city of Fribourg in order to evaluate the accuracy and flexibility of energy simulations. Two common energy-use models—a machine learning model and a GIS-based engineering model—were compared and evaluated against anonymized monitoring data. The study shows that the simulations were quite precise with an annual mean absolute percentage error of 12.8 and 19.3% for the machine learning and the GIS-based engineering model, respectively, on residential buildings built in different periods of construction. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis using the Morris method was carried out on the GIS-based engineering model in order to assess the impact of input variables on space heating consumption and to identify possible optimization opportunities of the existing model.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (9) ◽  
pp. 2538
Author(s):  
Praveen K. Cheekatamarla

Electrical and thermal loads of residential buildings present a unique opportunity for onsite power generation, and concomitant thermal energy generation, storage, and utilization, to decrease primary energy consumption and carbon dioxide intensity. This approach also improves resiliency and ability to address peak load burden effectively. Demand response programs and grid-interactive buildings are also essential to meet the energy needs of the 21st century while addressing climate impact. Given the significance of the scale of building energy consumption, this study investigates how cogeneration systems influence the primary energy consumption and carbon footprint in residential buildings. The impact of onsite power generation capacity, its electrical and thermal efficiency, and its cost, on total primary energy consumption, equivalent carbon dioxide emissions, operating expenditure, and, most importantly, thermal and electrical energy balance, is presented. The conditions at which a cogeneration approach loses its advantage as an energy efficient residential resource are identified as a function of electrical grid’s carbon footprint and primary energy efficiency. Compared to a heat pump heating system with a coefficient of performance (COP) of three, a 0.5 kW cogeneration system with 40% electrical efficiency is shown to lose its environmental benefit if the electrical grid’s carbon dioxide intensity falls below 0.4 kg CO2 per kWh electricity.


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