Energy Conservation Evaluation Research Articles

Energy Efficiency Premiums in Unlabeled Office Buildings

Whether commercial real estate market participants effectively evaluate building energy efficiency characteristics in the absence of a green label has so far remained unaddressed in the literature. I estimate the energy efficiency premium in unlabeled office buildings by exploiting variation in mandatory building energy standard implementations as a result of the 1992 U.S. Energy Policy Act. A more stringent energy code leads to rent and price premiums of approximately 4 percent and 9 percent, respectively. Heterogeneity in the rent premium is also observed based on who pays the utility bills, as would be expected if market participants correctly evaluate energy conservation characteristics. The rent and price premiums are consistent with full capitalization of the energy savings from a more stringent standard.

6-9 エネルギーシステム評価ソフトの開発および省エネルギー評価手法の開発((2)省エネルギーの評価・開発2,Session 6 省エネルギー,研究発表(口頭発表))

6-9 エネルギーシステム評価ソフトの開発および省エネルギー評価手法の開発((2)省エネルギーの評価・開発2,Session 6 省エネルギー,研究発表(口頭発表))

Evaluating energy conservation in China's heating industry

Energy conservation is a major strategy for China to shift to a low-carbon economy and achieve sustainable development. The heating industry uses coal as its main fuel source in China. Energy consumption of China's heating industry grew at an average annual growth rate of 7.75% over 1980–2011. We use the co-integration method to explore the long-run relationship between energy consumption of the heating industry and the factors including GDP, urban population density, central heating supply areas and fuel price. The results indicate that 1% GDP growth yields 2.24% increase in energy consumption of the heating industry. 1% urban population density growth and 1% central heating areas growth result in 0.56% and 0.36% decline in energy consumption of the heating industry, respectively. Under the BAU scenario, energy consumption of the heating industry will be 157.11 Mtce in 2020. Energy conservation potential is estimated to be 22.16 Mtce under the moderate scenario and 43.6 Mtce under the advanced scenario. Moreover, this paper holds the view that the central heating system can be considered as an effective heating method for cities with dense population, both in the south and north. At last, policy recommendations for energy conservation in the heating industry are provided.

钢铁企业节能减排考核评价体系及应用

依据当前我国钢铁企业节能减排工作的要求和研究现状，从原料及工序能耗、能源消费结构、技术工艺、资源效率和能源管理5个维度建立了钢铁企业节能减排考核评价指标体系。在此基础上，运用层次分析法确定各评价指标的权重，并依据模糊综合评价法计算钢铁企业节能减排工作得分，从而综合评价节能减排工作的优劣，最后以某钢铁企业为例进行实例研究，综合评价其节能减排工作，验证了模糊综合层次法在钢铁企业节能减排评价中的可行性。评价结果有助于钢铁企业及其他行业认清节能减排中存在的薄弱环节，为钢铁企业及相关企业提升节能减排工作效率提供科学的决策依据。 On the basis of China iron and steel enterprises’ current requirements and research status in energy conservation and emissions reduction, the evaluation index system of energy conservation and emissions reduction for iron and steel enterprises based on five dimensions of energy consumption of raw materials and process, energy consumption structure, technical process, resource efficiency and energy management is established. Based on the information stated above, the method of AHP is applied to determine the weight of each index, and AHP-fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method is used to get scores of iron and steel enterprises’ energy conservation and emissions reduction in order to judge the advantages and disadvantages of the energy conservation and emissions reduction. Finally, a case is used to confirm the availability of AHP-fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method in the evaluation of energy conservation and emissions reduction for iron and steel industry through the evaluation of its energy conservation and emissions reduction work. The results may help to identify weaknesses existing in energy conservation and emissions reduction and provide a scientific basis for improvement of energy conservation efficiency in iron and steel industry and other industries.

Why is the reliability of building simulation limited as a tool for evaluating energy conservation measures?

Buildings account for approximately 32% of the total energy consumption globally and up to 40% in the developed countries, which makes buildings a prime target for energy conservation. Various energy conservation measures (ECMs) have been proposed to improve the energy efficiency in buildings, and these ECMs are usually designed and assessed using calibrated building energy models. However, there is empirical evidence that reveals noticeable discrepancies between simulated performances of ECMs reported in building energy models and their actual performances measured in buildings. This paper examines two possible causes of such discrepancies. Specifically, this paper tests the following two hypotheses: (1) using assumed occupancy data as opposed to actual occupancy data in building energy simulation reduces the reliability of estimated performance of demand-driven ECMs; and (2) using an energy model built for one ECM to cross estimate energy consumption of another ECM is statistically inaccurate. An educational building was used as a test bed. The results proved both hypotheses true, showing that estimations were more accurate and consistent for models calibrated using actual occupancy compared with those using assumed occupancy, and that cross-ECM estimation resulted in statistical inaccuracy. The findings indicated that current building energy modeling methods have limited reliability in ECM performance assessment, and need to be improved to better support the design and implementation of ECMs in buildings.

Risk based life cycle assessment conceptual framework for energy supply systems in large buildings

This paper proposes an environmental assessment framework that integrates the conventional life cycle assessment (LCA) with risk assessment for the purpose of evaluating energy conservation systems in buildings from environmental and societal perspectives. The inclusion of the potential risks raised by the different stakeholders in this framework will help the LCA professionals to identify accurate system boundaries of their study. This research addresses some limitations of frameworks presented so far by providing process activity modeling, using Type-zero method of integrated definition language, IDEF0, as a tool to describe each phase of its application. The proposed framework considers the LCA risk-based analysis in three modules namely; (i) establish of the life cycle stages, (ii) identify risk indicators and perform risk assessment, and (iii) manage risks through applying the risk assessment results to the life cycle of building's energy system. The risk based life cycle assessment (RBLCA) framework proposed here is further explained in a case study of performing RBLCA for a hybrid energy supply system (HESS) that supplies power to a hotel building. This approach allows us to investigate unfavorable impacts and risks of using HESS as way for energy conservation.

Evaluation of Energy Conservation with Utilization of Marble Waste in Geotechnical Engineering

Nowadays one of the goals of all the countries has been to improve the international competitiveness and ensure a sustainable economy. This situation has become even more important with the increasing in population, consumption and rapid decreasing natural resources. Consumption of natural resources is created negative in terms of sustainable development with environmental problems. In addition, also, it is given the reason people's lives to reduce the energy needed to sustain a healthy and comfortable. Thus, recycling qualified wastes are a very substantial topic. In this study, the use of marble waste in geotechnical engineering, and the gains for energy to be obtained by recycling of its discussed.

The Literature Review Research on the Efficiency Evaluation of Energy Conservation and Emissions Reduction

The article reviews, summarizes and concludes the existing literature researches at home and abroad, and mainly from the meaning and the present situation of energy conservation and emissions reduction, the relationship with economy, society and environment, index system of energy conservation and emissions reduction, and efficiency evaluation methods of energy conservation and emissions reduction. Finally on the basis of summarizing, it puts forward the five expectations of domestic researches on energy saving and emission reduction.

System Approach for Building Energy Conservation

Energy use in residential and commercial buildings and towers represents more than 30% of energy consumption. The increase in number of buildings and towers in most of the major cities worldwide led to several initiatives for energy conservation programs with the main objective to achieve energy savings. Most energy strategies include energy conservation beside the increase in the penetration of renewable energy technologies. This paper shows business model and engineering design framework for practical implementation of energy conservation in buildings. Key performance indicators are modeled and used to evaluate energy conservation strategies and energy supply scenarios as part of the design and operation of building energy systems. The proposed system approach shows effective management of building energy knowledge on the basis of Energy Semantic Networks (ESN), which supports the simulation, evaluation, and optimization of several building energy conservation scenarios. Case study hotel is used to illustrate the proposed building energy conservation framework.

Comprehensive Evaluation of Energy Conservation and Emissions Reduction for Green Power Grid

Energy crisis and environmental protection are becoming the focus of the sustainable development, which strongly calls construction of green power. This paper defines green power grid content. Evaluate energy conservation from power generation side, transmission side, distribution side and electricity side, emissions reduction from atmospheric environmental impact, water environmental impact and, noise influence and solid waste influence, so as to establish the energy conservation and emission reduction evaluation index system for green power grid. Combination weight based on AHP and entropy and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation are established. A case analysis in China verifies that the proposed evaluation indicators and model are validated and practical.

The Energy-Saving Evaluation of Construction Site Based on Green Building and Unascertained Measure

As society advances, green building has become a fundamental issue. According to the green building system to determine the effect index system of energy saving on the construction site.Using the basic theory of the unascertained function, the unascertained model was constructed to evaluate energy conservation in construction process. The target of this method is minimum energy consumption in the whole system of construction. Through using the method of combining qualitative and quantitative analysis, to quantify the qualitative indicators in the evaluation of energy saving, and make quantitative analysis and energysaving evaluation. Example analysis shows that the evaluation results can be more objective and comprehensive to reflect energysaving condition of the construction enterprises during the process of construction management.

Comprehensive evaluation of energy conservation and emission reduction policies

Various transportation policies can help conserve energy and reduce pollution emissions. Some, called cleaner vehicle strategies in this article, reduce emission rates per vehicle-kilometer. Others, called mobility management (also called transportation demand management) strategies, reduce total vehicle travel. There is disagreement concerning which approach is best overall. Some studies conclude that cleaner vehicle strategies are generally most cost effective and beneficial, while others favor mobility management strategies. These different conclusions tend to reflect different analysis scope. Analyses that favor clean vehicle strategies tend to overlook or undervalue some significant impacts including cleaner vehicle rebound effects and mobility management co-benefits. More comprehensive analysis tends to favor mobility management. This article investigates these issues and provides specific recommendations for comprehensive evaluation.

Reducing energy consumption in low income public housing: Interviewing residents about energy behaviors

Low-income housing constitutes an important but often overlooked area for energy use reductions within the US residential sector. Given the scarcity of existing information on this subject, this study uses a semi-structured interview format to explore the key behavioral tendencies, energy knowledge gaps, and attitudes among low-income public housing residents, with the goal of demonstrating a process for developing, scoring, and analyzing the interviews that will be useful to other researchers when first engaging complex subjects like behavior in contexts that are not well covered by existing literature. Methods for sampling subjects and iteratively developing an interview guide and response-scoring framework are described, and the usefulness of this approach in allowing both quantitative and qualitative analysis of behavior response data is demonstrated. The paper concludes by illustrating how themes that emerge from the response analysis can be used to inform future surveying and intervention efforts. Key themes include the varying definitions for “comfort” amongst residents; the lack of resident control over the household environment; the tendency for residents to evaluate energy conservation measures (ECMs) in terms of costs, savings, and comfort; the muted differences in behavior between those who do and do not pay energy bills; and the importance of building maintenance and resident energy education to ongoing efficiency efforts.

Validation of the Energy Conservation Strategies Inventory (ECSI)

ContextIn applying good energy conservation strategies to relieve cancer-related fatigue, it is critical to first identify cancer patients who are at a high risk for poor energy conservation. However, instruments have not been developed to evaluate energy conservation strategies in an oncology setting. ObjectivesThe aim of this study was to validate an instrument that cancer patients may use to evaluate energy conservation strategies to overcome cancer-related fatigue. MethodsThe questionnaire development followed a four-phase process: 1) item generation and reduction, 2) construction, 3) pilot testing, and 4) field testing. Using relevant and priority criteria, as well as pilot testing, we developed a 25-item questionnaire. After field testing, five items were discarded. Finally, 20 items were included in the Energy Conservation Strategies Inventory (ECSI). Factor analysis, multitrait scaling analysis, and Cronbach’s α were used to determine the construct validity and reliability. ResultsFactor analyses of data from 140 cancer patients resulted in the ECSI, which covers activities related to planning, overcoming distractions, labor saving, burden reducing, and comfort. All subscales (Cronbach’s α range, 0.69–0.78) and total scores (Cronbach’s α=0.87) were found to possess acceptable internal consistency. ConclusionsThe good psychometric properties of the ECSI instrument show that it may be useful for measuring the frequency of energy conservation strategies used by cancer patients.

Applying LCA and fuzzy AHP to evaluate building energy conservation

Reducing energy consumption and environment pollution is an important part in energy sustainability. Building energy conservation evaluation will drive the application of the new energy conservation technology. For building an energy conservation evaluation, energy conservation and environment impacts in all stages of the life cycle should be assessed. In this paper, the fuzzy analytic hierarchical process method and life-cycle assessment theory are adopted for building energy conservation evaluation. Factors in different hierarchies are weighted with linguistic variables by pair-wise comparisons, and factors in the lowest hierarchy within the different second hierarchy factors are also evaluated by linguistic variables. The membership degrees and integrated evaluation values are calculated. Then an example is studied to illustrate the proposed approach. The validity of the proposed method is verified and it demonstrates the effectiveness and practicability of the proposed approach. The results provide guidance in evaluating building energy conservation and determining the energy conservation grade of the building.

Performance Evaluation of coal enterprises energy conservation and reduction of pollutant emissions base on GRD-TOPSIS

Abstract For the performance evaluation of coal enterprises energy conservation and reduction of pollutant emission, a new GRD-TOPSIS method is proposed. By analyzing the background of performance evaluation of energy conservation and reduction of pollutant emission, the performance evaluation system of coal enterprises is established. Three coal enterprises of Yanzhou City are selected as evaluation objects, and use the new method to evaluate their performance of energy conservation and reduction of pollutant emission. The practical example shows the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.KeywodsGRD-TOPSIS; MADM; energy conservation and reduction of pollutant emission

Potential of energy savings in the hotel sector in Jordan

This paper presents some insights into Jordan’s energy consumption in the tourist accommodation sector. The results of a recent survey on environmental performance in the tourist accommodation sector in Jordan were used to evaluate energy conservation in hotels. A survey was designed and distributed to hotels’ managers and departments’ supervisors in order to understand the environmental performance in the tourist accommodation sector in Jordan during the period 10–17 August 2006. Also some field visits were conducted to fully understand hotels interaction regarding the environment, in addition to help interpreting the results of the survey. The study is limited to all classified hotels in Jordan. It was found that lighting hotels’ main building and outside areas, and air conditioning consume more electricity compared to other departments. The results show that few classified hotels already installed energy saving equipments, though, it was noticed that managers of one star hotels were not really willing to make such changes in their hotels, on the other hand, other classified hotels (2–5 star hotels) have shown a high willingness to make changes in their hotels to reduce the consumption of different types of energy. Hotel’s classification played a significant role in explaining variations in most of the results, particularly when it comes to long-term investments to reduce energy consumption by using energy efficient appliances. Five and four star hotels were the most hotels willing to use energy efficient appliances to reduce energy consumption. The study suggested some strategies to help reduce the negative impacts of high energy consumption in hotels. These strategies include better insulation, and enhanced insulation for the hot water reticulation system. Moreover, enhancing and increasing the level of awareness among all hoteliers through a directed and well-designed campaign. Also offer interest free loans; and activate precise standards and specifications for new hotels.

H-20 ペリメータと中央にアトリウムを有するオフィスビルにおける環境性能の評価解析 : (第3報)省エネルギー性・環境性の評価

H-20 ペリメータと中央にアトリウムを有するオフィスビルにおける環境性能の評価解析 : (第3報)省エネルギー性・環境性の評価

Adaptive traffic-based control method for energy conservation in wireless devices

Mobile units have many constraints for reliable communication in today’s mobile environments. Unlike wired networks in mobile networks, mobility induces frequent route changes. Energy conservation is an important issue that has to be taken into account for mobile devices. Every infrastructureless network must be adaptively self-configured particularly in terms of energy, connectivity, resource allocation and memory. Efficient utilization of battery power is important for wireless users because due to their movements their energy is fluctuating at different levels during operation mode. Traffic plays a major role for energy consumption because of the unpredictable incoming flow nature. Generally, the minimum transmission power required to keep the network connected achieves the optimal throughput performance in a dynamically changing topology network. In this paper an adaptive traffic-based control method for energy conservation is described and examined, which bounds an asynchronous operation where each node evaluates dissimilar sleep-wake schedules/states based on each node’s incoming sleep-history traffic. Simulation study is carried out for throughput, traffic characterization against performance and energy conservation evaluation of the proposed model taking into account a number of metrics and estimation of the effects of incrementing the sleep time duration to conserve energy. The proposed method could be applied to infrastructureless networks with any underlying routing protocol to provide independency, portability, as well as “fair” collaboration among energy conservation mechanism and routing protocol.

Evaluation of energy conservation programs in residential sector using fuzzy logic methodology

In this field investigation, a new approach for evaluating energy conservation and awareness programs within residential consumers is presented and discussed. It is based on expert computer knowledge-based systems and fuzzy set analyses. Computer-programmed surveys were carried out on a random sample of energy users in Jordan, such as students, housewives and educated and uneducated citizens, before and after they received a simple energy educational material. The fuzzy set logic technique enabled to condense large data into a small set of variable rules. Relative weights were given for each response and a cumulative grade was estimated. This in turn made the employed expert system effective in evaluating energy conservation programs. The follow-up survey revealed that a reasonable rise, of about 15%, of energy related knowledge was achieved, as compared to the initial survey. Fuzzy set analyses suggest that some fluctuations in the relative rise of public awareness programs may be attributed to insufficient knowledge. Thus, through public awareness and demonstration programs as well as incentives, such as financial assistance and technical aid to encourage energy end-users, in all sectors, to employ the latest technologies and more energy-efficient equipment, final energy demand can be reduced or controlled. Hence, energy efficiency should be incorporated as a corner stone of the national energy policy.