Beyond energy efficiency in evaluating sustainable development in planning and the built environment

Abstract

The EU has set the policy target of reducing energy use by 20% by the year 2020. Therefore, a substantial consumption decrease is needed in the built environment sector. Despite the great energy efficiency improvements in households, recent energy consumption data analyses show that these targets will unlikely be reached. The general aim of this study is to point out the need to define new indicators and evaluation approaches in urban planning and the built environment which are based on the concept of ‘energy subsidiarity’, focusing on local renewable resources rather than on current approaches based on energy efficiency. This concept correlates energy consumption with the energy supply from local renewable resources and is here proposed as the new urban planning evaluation approach toward a sustainable built environment.In the paper, the ‘Jevons Paradox’ concept and the ‘energy rebound effect’ phenomenon are used to demonstrate how current approaches based on energy efficiency, alone, cannot lead to a r...