Energy efficient residential house wall system

Effect of Climates and Building Materials on House Wall Thermal Performance

Thermal Performance Modelling of Residential House Wall Systems

Development of an energy model for the residential sector: Electricity consumption in Andalusia, Spain

Determinants of energy demand in the French service sector: A decomposition analysis

Increase of greenhouse gases concentration in the atmosphere, mainly carbon dioxide, which leads to global warming, indicates the need to take actions to reduce use of energy from carbon sources.The building sector is the largest consumer of energy, and thereby the largest emitter of greenhouse gases.In this paper the possibilities of achieving "near net zero emission" vision, in the residential sector, by the year 2050, were analysed.The necessary policies and technical energy efficiency measures were analysed, that could be applied in the building sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina by 2050.Large amount of energy is used for space heating and hot water, mainly from fossil fuels, which significantly contributes to air pollution and global warming.Specific energy consumption for space heating in Bosnia and Herzegovina is several times higher than in EU countries with the similar climate conditions.Therefore, it is necessary to reduce energy consumption significantly, ie to increase energy efficiency.It is also necessary to deploy the potential of renewable energy use in buildings and to use buildings as energy producers.In this way, in the long term, energy costs in buildings would be significantly reduced, as well as dependence on energy imports and the need for building of new capacities for energy generation.From other side, employment would be increased while emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases would be reduced.In this paper, due to the availability of reliable data on energy consumption for the Sarajevo Canton, the necessary policies and measures to promote energy efficiency were analysed, that could be applied in the residential sector in the Sarajevo Canton.

In this paper, we used the life-cycle analysis (LCA) method to evaluate the energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of natural gas (NG) distributed generation (DG) projects in China. We took the China Resources Snow Breweries (CRSB) NG DG project in Sichuan province of China as a base scenario and compared its life cycle energy consumption and GHG emissions performance against five further scenarios. We found the CRSB DG project (all energy input is NG) can reduce GHG emissions by 22%, but increase energy consumption by 12% relative to the scenario, using coal combined with grid electricity as an energy input. The LCA also indicated that the CRSB project can save 24% of energy and reduce GHG emissions by 48% relative to the all-coal scenario. The studied NG-based DG project presents major GHG emissions reduction advantages over the traditional centralized energy system. Moreover, this reduction of energy consumption and GHG emissions can be expanded if the extra electricity from the DG project can be supplied to the public grid. The action of combining renewable energy into the NG DG system can also strengthen the dual merit of energy conservation and GHG emissions reduction. The marginal CO2 abatement cost of the studied project is about 51 USD/ton CO2 equivalent, which is relatively low. Policymakers are recommended to support NG DG technology development and application in China and globally to boost NG utilization and control GHG emissions.

Rural residential energy consumption accounts for 46.6% of total building-related energy consumption of China. In Northeast China, energy consumption for space heating represents a significant proportion of total rural residential energy consumption and has reached 100 million tce (tons of standard coal equivalent), or more than 60% of total household energy consumption. In terms of energy consumption per square meter of gross floor area, rural residential energy consumption for heating is more than that of cities (20kgce/m2). However, the average indoor temperature of most rural residence is below 10°C, much less than that in cities (18°C). Hence, it is an important task for Chinese energy saving and emission reduction to reduce rural residential energy consumption, while enhancing indoor thermal comfort at the same time.Restricted by local technology and low economic level, rural residences currently have poor thermal insulation resulting in severe heat loss. This paper reports on research aimed at developing design strategies for improving thermal insulation properties of rural residences with appropriate technology. A field survey was conducted in six counties in severe cold areas of Northeast China, addressing the aspects of indoor and outdoor temperature, humidity, internal and external surface temperature of building envelop enclosure, and so on.The survey data show the following:1. Modern (after 2000) brick-cement rural residences perform much better than the traditional adobe clay houses and Tatou houses (a regional type of rural residence in Northeast China – see figure A) in overall thermal performance and indoor thermal comfort;2. Among the traditional residential house types, adobe clay houses have better heat stability and thermal storage capacity than Tatou houses;3. Applying an internal or external thermal insulation layer can greatly improve rural residential thermal insulation properties, and is an economical and efficient solution in rural areas;4. In terms of roofing materials, tiled roofs show much better thermal insulation properties than thatch roofs;5. Adopting passive solar techniques can form a transition space (greenhouse) against frigid temperatures, resulting in interior temperatures 5.91°C higher than the outside surroundings. It is evident that local passive solar room design offers significant heat preservation effects and lower cost ($12/m2), embodies the ecological wisdom of rural residents, and is therefore important to popularize.The above experimental results can provide guidance in energy conservation design for both self-built residences and rural residences designed by architects. In addition, the results can also provide experimental data for energy-saving studies for rural residences in China.

Along with the outdoor climate, building design, materials and construction system determine the thermal behaviour of buildings, the ability to keep indoor comfort conditions and the energy consumption through their lifespan. Buildings must provide comfortable indoor environment which should be reasonably assured regardless of climatic fluctuations. This paper presents a novel methodology for quantifying the hygrothermal discomfort risk of any building design. By means of a numeric model of the building hydrothermal response and stochastic simulation techniques, the expected frequency and duration of discomfort events in each building room and the probability distribution of energy consumption associated to heating and cooling can be estimated. The article presents fundamentals on hygrothermal risk assessment, the numerical simulation models and the developed reliability indexes. In order to illustrate the proposed approach in the context of the design process, the methodology was applied to a prototype of a residential house conventionally built and acclimatized. The materials and construction reflect typical residential housing in the region of study. A bioclimatic variant of the same building is also evaluated. Monte Carlo simulations under stochastic climate conditions allow identifying infrequent but important situations in which the building is unable to meet comfort requirements. Statistical analysis of simulation results is performed and condensed in meaningful reliability indices. By means of these indicators, shortcoming of the architectonic design can be revealed and properly solved. In addition, quantitative comfort reliability indices facilitate the comparison of different thermal building designs on the same basis. The proposed methodology and the developed models can be applied without constraints to any building design under a wide variety of climates. 1. INTRODUCTION It has been proved that buildings are intensive energy consumers in all countries, especially due to the operation of HVAC equipment. In Argentina, buildings represent 40% of the overall energy consumption, 90% of which is supplied from non renewable sources (Evans, 2010). Residential and commercial buildings account for almost 39 percent of total U.S. energy consumption and 38 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Nearly all of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the residential and commercial sectors can be attributed to energy use in buildings (DOE, 2008). The consumption of heating and cooling can be reduced principally through the correct morphologic design, favourable orientation and the appropriate selection of building envelopes and their components (Filippín, 2005). The implementation of bioclimatic strategies (BS) in building design aims at maintaining comfortable indoor conditions as much time as possible while minimizing conventional energy consumption. Buildings are subject to changing climactic conditions. Part of the climate variability is stochastic in its very nature and introduces considerable uncertainty in resulting hygrothermal indoor conditions as well as in the effectiveness of certain BS (Boland, 1997). Buildings have to preserve indoor comfort, regardless of the severity and persistence of adverse outdoor climate. The problem with bioclimatic design is the high dependence of performance on outdoor climate and the consequent

Climate change and water security: Estimating the greenhouse gas costs of achieving water security through investments in modern irrigation technology

Urban residential energy switching in China between 1980 and 2014 prevents 2.2 million premature deaths

Interactive analysis of green building materials promotion with relevance to energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from Taiwan’s building sector

The potential challenge for the effective GHG emissions mitigation of urban energy consumption: A case study of Macau

Climate change mitigation potential of contaminated land redevelopment: A city-level assessment method

Seawater desalination is considered a technique with high water supply potential and has become an emerging alternative for freshwater supply in China. The increase of the capacity also increases energy consumption and greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions, which has not been well investigated in studies. This study has analyzed the current development of seawater desalination in China, including the capacity, distribution, processes, as well as the desalted water use. Energy consumption and GHG emissions of overall desalination in China, as well as for the provinces, are calculated covering the period of 2006–2016. The unit product cost of seawater desalination plants specifying processes is also estimated. The results showed that 1) The installed capacity maintained increased from 2006 to 2016, and reverse osmosis is the major process used for seawater desalination in China. 2) The energy consumption increased from 81 MWh/y to 1,561 MWh/y during the 11 years. The overall GHG emission increase from 85 Mt CO2eq/y to 1,628 Mt CO2eq/y. Tianjin had the largest GHG emissions, following are Hebei and Shandong, with emissions of 4.1 Mt CO2eq/y, 2.2 Mt CO2eq/y. and 1.0 Mt CO2eq/y. 3) The unit product cost of seawater desalination is higher than other water supply alternatives, and it differentiates the desalination processes. The average unit product cost of the reverse osmosis process is 0.96 USD and 2.5 USD for the multiple-effect distillation process. The potential for future works should specify different energy forms, e.g. heat and power. Alternatives of process integration should be investigated—e.g. efficiency of using the energy, heat integration, and renewables in water desalination, as well as the utilization of total site heat integration.

Assessing drivers of residential energy consumption in Turkey: 2000–2018