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The purpose of this article is to assess the viability of blanket sustainability policies, such as Building Rating Systems in achieving energy efficiency in university campus buildings. We analyzed the energy consumption trends of 10 LEED-certified buildings and 14 non-LEED certified buildings at a major university in the US. Energy Use Intensity (EUI) of the LEED buildings was significantly higher (EUI LEED = 331.20 kBtu/sf/yr) than non-LEED buildings (EUI non-LEED = 222.70 kBtu/sf/yr); however, the median EUI values were comparable (EUI LEED = 172.64 and EUI non-LEED = 178.16). Because the distributions of EUI values were non-symmetrical in this dataset, both measures can be used for energy comparisons—this was also evident when EUI computations exclude outliers, EUI LEED = 171.82 and EUI non-LEED = 195.41. Additional analyses were conducted to further explore the impact of LEED certification on university campus buildings energy performance. No statistically significant differences were observed between certified and non-certified buildings through a range of robust comparison criteria. These findings were then leveraged to devise strategies to achieve sustainable energy policies for university campus buildings and to identify potential issues with portfolio level building energy performance comparisons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Explores how transport impacts of urban growth can be modelled. • Proposes a framework to model the transport impacts of urban growth. • Compares transport impacts of scenarios with various spatial and temporal scales. • Reveals that balanced scenario makes the highest contribution to sustainable development. The urban transport sector is responsible for a considerable portion of the global greenhouse gas emissions, and considered as a primary contributor of environmental pollutants. This study aims to explore ways to compare transport impacts of alternative urban growth scenarios at different spatial and temporal scales. To achieve this aim, alternative policy scenarios and various transport impact indicators were synthesized from a Delphi survey. Four alternative urban growth scenarios (i.e., business-as-usual, environment-focused, economy-focused, balanced scenarios) for the South East Queensland Region of Australia were evaluated by comparing selected indicator values from transportation models developed for three spatial (i.e., region, city, local) and four temporal (i.e., 2016, 2021, 2031, 2041) scales. The results of the analysis disclose that policies under the balanced scenario make the highest contribution towards achieving sustainable urban development—as this scenario generates the least travel time, travel distance, and traffic congestion. The findings reveal that the empirical approach put forward in this paper is useful to inform urban policymaking, and assist urban policymakers, urban/transport planners, practitioners, and stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]