[Bldg-sim] How much energy savings do you think has resulted from building energy standards and voluntary programs in the US building stock over the past 20 years ?

Joe Huang yjhuang at whiteboxtechnologies.com
Wed Sep 7 19:24:10 PDT 2011


Hi, everyone,

I've gotten involved in doing a short write-up for the United Nations Environmental 
Programme (UNEP) on the energy savings in the building sector due to the implementation of 
building energy standards over the past two decades.  My thesis is that although the 
theoretical energy efficiency of the building stock has improved significantly over this 
period, the actual measurable reductions in energy use intensity has been quite small, due 
to the following factors - increased amount of plug loads, and improvements in thermal 
comfort in lieu of real energy reductions (the so-called "take-back effect" mentioned by 
Mark Modera and others). The bottom line is that although one can say that energy use 
intensity in refrigerators have gone down by more than 50%, one cannot simply cannot say 
the same in either residential or commercial buildings.  At the most elementary level, has 
anyone documented the change in EUIs in residential and commercial buildings by vintage 
based on data bases such as RECS and CBECS for the entire US, or CEUS for California ?  On 
a more detailed level, does anyone know of studies that estimated the changes in space 
conditioning energy use between buildings built before the standards, i.e., 1970's 
vintage, and afterwards, i.e., within the last decade?

I'm throwing the net wide here, because I need to  get some ballpark numbers by this 
Friday.  Thanks.

Joe

Joe Huang
White Box Technologies, Inc.
346 Rheem Blvd., Suite 108D
Moraga CA 94556
yjhuang at whiteboxtechnologies.com
www.whiteboxtechnologies.com
(o) (925)388-0265
(c) (510)928-2683
"building energy simulations at your fingertips"



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