Search

Curbing the increasing carbon emissions from residential and commercial buildings would be of great importance for achieving China's NDC (Nationally Determined Contributions) target. However, studies on city-level emission pathways and mitigation strategies aiming at building sector are still far from sufficient, especially for regions in Central China. Considering the large potential for further building energy demand increase within this area, this study focuses on Hubei, one of the first batch low-carbon pilot provinces to investigate the possibility of earlier emission peak and reduction potentials by prefecture-level city. When downscaling provincial energy use and emissions estimated from local government plans and academic research, statistical data was applied to exploring the relationship between building energy consumption and socioeconomic variables, then spatial allocation factor could be generated after combining with projections of grid-level GDP and population. Results show that by replacing coal and natural gas (NG) that are currently the main heating & cooking energy sources with more electricity and renewable energy, emissions from the building sector would peak around 2025, which is especially true for three major big cities with higher emission growth rate due to population and urban expansions. Moreover, when considering additional improvement on building energy efficiency, provincial reductions burden would be more evenly distributed among cities. It is implied that by formulating tiered mitigation policies for cities at various economic development levels, including decarbonization of energy structure and improvement of energy efficiency, more cities would peak their emissions from the building sector before 2030. This analytical framework innovatively create a multi-city platform for the simulation of building sector mitigation pathway to facilitate cities' low-carbon development. Image 1 • A spatial downscaling framework was developed for building energy consumption and emission projections on city-level. • Building sector mitigation potential for a low-carbon region with limited supporting data was quantified with this method. • Emission pathway and reduction contribution of the building sectors of multiple cities were estimated. • Electrification and greater renewable energy use in buildings would make emissions peak earlier for more developed cities. • Further building energy efficiency improvement helps increase the mitigation contribution from the less developed cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to tap the energy saving and climate mitigation potential of buildings, transaction costs of implementing energy efficient technologies need to be better understood and ultimately reduced. The objective of this paper is to identify and analyze the nature and scale of transaction costs resulting from the application of the passive house concept in energy efficient renovations. Related conceptual choices are also discussed. This study explores learning strategies as a potential to reduce transaction costs. It focuses on transaction costs borne by building owners and building developers in the planning and implementation phases of a passive house-oriented renovation in Sweden. Results reveal three main sources of transaction costs: due diligence, negotiations and monitoring. The analysis shows that transaction costs are non-negligible and for individual cost sources the scale can be three times higher than for conventional renovations. To reduce transaction costs, various learning strategies such as study visits, demonstration projects, new forms of meetings and new channels of (written) information were found. These strategies have the potential to half transaction costs of future renovation projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many newly built, energy-efficient terraced houses are characterised by high indoor air temperatures and thermal comfort issues, because these state-of-the-art houses were designed and built without considering the warming climate conditions in the summer. As a result, many of these residential buildings are at risk of overheating and require careful implementation of passive cooling design systems when retrofitting. This study reviews the overheating risk and energy effectiveness of six passive design strategies tested and implemented in an innovative terraced house located in southeast London during the long-term heatwaves experienced in both the UK and continental Europe in the summer of 2018. A quantitative research methodology is employed based on an extensive monitoring campaign conducted to measure environmental conditions, including indoor air temperature, relative humidity and CO 2 of each occupied space in a prototype base-case building. In the subsequent phase of the research, retrofit strategies were investigated by modelling and simulation using the Integrated Environmental Solutions (IES) software suite for data validation. The preliminary results of the modelling and simulation confirmed the survey findings of high levels of occupant discomfort and relatively high cooling loads. The internal operating temperatures of the simulated rooms remained high throughout the day and night during the long-term heatwaves, ranging from a minimum of 24.7 °C to a maximum of 32.1 °C. The results highlight significant deviations in the estimated energy consumption of the base-case building as well as in the energetic and environmental indexes of the passive cooling design strategies. The study will contribute to the strategic design of retrofit interventions to effectively reduce cooling energy consumption by considering occupants' thermal comfort, thermal adaptation and energy use. Graphical abstract to this article can be found online at – The Graphical abstract illustrates the adopted and developed comprehensive methodological design approach for the study. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]