The OurEnergyLibrary aggregates and indexes publicly available fact sheets, journal articles, reports, studies, and other publications on U.S. energy topics. It is updated every week to include the most recent energy resources from academia, government, industry, non-profits, think tanks, and trade associations. Suggest a resource by emailing us at info@ourenergypolicy.org.
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As a significant source of emissions, cities have an important role to play in addressing the carbon footprint of activities occurring within their boundaries. Among many actions targeting different sectors, cities are actively pursuing improvements in the energy performance of commercial buildings. This brief explores several policies that leading cities are adopting: energy use benchmarking and disclosure mandates, retro-commissioning and retrofitting policies, and requirements for building upgrades to meet current codes. Our review finds these policies stand to deliver and facilitate emissions reductions in cities that adopt them. However, it should be noted that achieving deep reductions and a true …
View Full ResourceRising standards of living and global warming are increasing the demand for space cooling in buildings, creating the need for new climate adaptation and carbon mitigation strategies. The approach examined here focuses on a bundle of policies aimed at catalyzing the rapid market penetration of super-efficient heat pumps, within the context of a decarbonizing electric grid. The bundle of catalyzing policies (appliance standards, research and development, and deployment programs) is examined using the National Energy Modeling System to evaluate the likely impacts and the costs and benefits of this strategy in the U.S. We conclude that the policy bundle could …
View Full ResourceBuilding energy use accounted for 38 percent of total US carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2012, and roughly half of those emissions were attributable to the commercial building sector. A new policy that has been adopted in 10 US cities and one US county is a requirement that commercial and sometimes also multifamily residential building owners disclose their annual energy use and benchmark it relative to other buildings. We discuss these nascent policies, preliminary analyses of the data that have been collected so far, and how to evaluate whether they are having an effect on energy use and CO2 emissions. …
View Full ResourceOn February 2, 2015, President Obama released his $4 trillion fiscal year (FY) 2016 budget proposal for the federal government. The request includes $563 billion for non-defense discretionary spending – $5 billion over FY 2015 enacted levels. The budget reflects the administration’s “all of the above” energy strategy, as well as its continued focus on
addressing climate change and investing in infrastructure. The proposed 2016 budget increases the Department of Energy’s (DOE) funding by 9 percent over 2014 enacted levels, raises the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) budget by 5.5 percent, and hikes the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) funding by 31 …
This paper presents the results of numerous commercial and residential building simulations, with the purpose of examining the impact of climate change on peak and annual building energy consumption over the portion of the EIC (Eastern Interconnection) located in the United States. The climate change scenario considered includes changes in mean climate characteristics as well as changes in the frequency and duration of intense weather events. Simulations were performed using the BEND (Building Energy Demand) model which is a detailed building analysis platform utilizing EnergyPlusTM as the simulation engine. Over 26,000 building configurations of different types, sizes, vintages, and characteristics …
View Full ResourceThis report examines various sources of building performance data, identifies Key Performance Indicators that support the analysis of building performance data, and discusses how to establish a feedback loop among designers, managers, and tenants.…
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