The purpose of this paper is to provide a source of information on thermal energy use in buildings, its drivers, and their past, present and future trends on a global and regional basis. Energy use ...in buildings forms a large part of global and regional energy demand. The importance of heating and cooling in total building energy use is very diverse with this share varying between 18% and 73%. Biomass is still far the dominant fuel when a global picture is considered; the role of electricity is substantially growing, and the direct use of coal is disappearing from this sector, largely replaced by electricity and natural gas in the most developed regions. This paper identifies the different drivers of heating and cooling energy demand, and decomposes this energy demand into key drivers based on a Kaya identity approach: number of households, persons per household, floor space per capita and specific energy consumption for residential heating and cooling; and GDP, floor space per GDP, and specific energy consumption for commercial buildings. This paper also reviews the trends in the development of these drivers for the present, future – and for which data were available, for the past – in 11 world regions as well as globally. Results show that in a business-as-usual scenario, total residential heating and cooling energy use is expected to more or less stagnate, or slightly decrease, in the developed parts of the world. In contrast, commercial heating and cooling energy use will grow in each world region. Finally, the results show that per capita total final residential building energy use has been stagnating in the vast majority of world regions for the past three decades, despite the very significant increases in energy service levels in each of these regions.
Energy use in buildings in a long-term perspective Urge-Vorsatz, Diana; Petrichenko, Ksenia; Staniec, Maja ...
Current opinion in environmental sustainability,
June 2013, 2013-6-00, Letnik:
5, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
•Key challenges related to energy use in buildings are discussed.•The main strategies to mitigate energy use-related challenges are presented.•Considerable potential for energy savings in buildings ...is demonstrated by 2050.•Global lock-in risk is quantified: 80% of 2005 energy savings can be locked by 2050.•The mitigation scenarios of other well-known models are analyzed and compared.
Energy services in and related to buildings are responsible for approximately one-third of total global final energy demand and energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. They also contribute to the other key energy-related global sustainability challenges including lack of access to modern energy services, climate change, indoor and outdoor air pollution, related and additional health risks and energy dependence.
The aim of this paper is to summarize the main sustainability challenges related to building thermal energy use and to identify the key strategies for how to address these challenges. The paper's basic premises and results are provided by and updated from the analysis conducted for the Global Energy Assessment: identification of strategies and key solutions; scenario assessment; and the comparison of the results with other models in the literature. The research has demonstrated that buildings can play a key role in solving sustainability challenges: close to one-third of 2005 building energy use can be eliminated by the proliferation of state-of-the-art construction and retrofit know-how in each world region, while maintaining wealth and amenity increases. In contrast, approximately 80% of this 2005 energy use will be locked in by the middle of the century if policies are not sufficiently ambitious in targeting regionally specific state-of-the-art performance levels.
•Development of a new model was developed to estimate the technical potential for net zero energy buildings.•It considers different locations, climates and building types and vintages.•It combines ...methods for bottom-up energy modeling and geospatial analysis.•Results show a significant energy savings in all regions and building types.
With the Paris Agreement coming into force, global efforts will need to maximize opportunities through energy efficiency and renewable energy generation. Zero energy/carbon initiatives are mushrooming worldwide, but it has not been fully understood which building types in which climates and under which conditions can potentially be built to net zero energy standards. In order to inform these efforts, a new model was developed to estimate the technical potential for building—integrated solar energy (BISE, the name of the model) generation in a high resolution regional, climate and building typology breakdown., The BISE model also evaluates the opportunities for potential net zero energy buildings based on the BISE findigns, combining these with the findings of two global low-energy building models. The BISE model has a very high resolution in terms of geographic regions, climate types, building types and vintages. Moreover, the model combines methods for bottom-up energy modeling and geospatial analysis. The thermal building energy demand estimation is based on the 3CSEP-HEB model and the plug load scenarios are based on the BUENAS model. Results are wide, due to intrinsic limitationso of the model detailed in the paper, but it is shown that there is a substantial potential for building-integrated solar energy generation in all world regions, and that the Deep Efficiency Scenario allows significantly more building types to meet net zero energy levels by 2050 in contrast to a scenario when only moderate energy efficiency improvements are implemented.
Once the developmental path has been chosen by a country it is very difficult to change it, even for more efficient one, because of accompanying costs and established behavioral patterns (Altman ...2000). The chosen path or solution might be “locked-in or become a permanent or a stable equilibrium” (Altman 2000). These ideas of path dependency can be implemented to energy efficiency development of a country. The improvement of energy efficiency usually associated with reduction of energy use by means of implementation of more advanced technologies. In this regards once a certain technological mix has been accepted in an economy, it is hard for a market to switch to another technology, as it is, usually, involves additional costs (David 1985 and Arthur 1989). It illustrates the key obstacle for energy efficiency improvement.
To overcome this disadvantage the market has to transform towards higher energy efficiency. This process is hindered by certain barriers to energy efficiency. To reduce the barriers policy instruments, aimed at increasing energy efficiency, have to be implemented.
In this paper the status of bypassing path dependency by means of EE policy development in Greece is considered by analyzing energy intensity of tertiary sector, household energy efficiency index and effectiveness of ongoing and planned policy instruments. On this basis the conclusion on whether the market transformation is taking place in Greece’s building sector is made.
Energy End-Use: Buildings Ürge-Vorsatz, Diana; Eyre, Nick; Graham, Peter ...
Global Energy Assessment,
08/2012
Book Chapter
Executive SummaryBuildings are key to a sustainable future because their design, construction, operation, and the activities in buildings are significant contributors to energy-related sustainability ...challenges – reducing energy demand in buildings can play one of the most important roles in solving these challenges. More specifically:The buildings sector and people's activities in buildings are responsible for approximately 31% of global final energy demand, approximately one-third of energy-related CO2 emissions, approximately two-thirds of halocarbon, and approximately 25–33% of black carbon emissions.Several energy-related problems affecting human health and productivity take place in buildings, including mortality and morbidity due to poor indoor air quality or inadequate indoor temperatures. Therefore, improving buildings and their equipment offers one of the entry points to addressing these challenges.More efficient energy and material use, as well as sustainable energy supply in buildings, are critical to tackling the sustainability-related challenges outlined in the GEA. Recent major advances in building design, know-how, technology, and policy have made it possible for global building energy use to decline significantly. A number of lowenergy and passive buildings, both retrofitted and newly constructed, already exist, demonstrating that low level of building energy performance is achievable. With the application of on-site and community-scale renewable energy sources, several buildings and communities could become zero-net-energy users and zero-greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters, or net energy suppliers.Recent advances in materials and know-how make new buildings that use 10–40% of the final heating and cooling energy of conventional new buildings cost-effective in all world regions and climate zones.
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