Energy Star is a voluntary program launched by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and now managed by the EPA and U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) that helps businesses and individuals save money and protect the environment through superior energy efficiency. Energy Star provides simple, credible, and unbiased information that consumers and businesses rely on to make well-informed decisions to save money and reduce emissions. A widely recognized symbol for energy efficiency the Energy Star label can be found on more than 75 different product categories, new homes, commercial buildings and industrial plants. Thousands of industrial, manufacturing, retailer, commercial, construction, home improvement, utility, state, and local organizations—including more than 40 percent of the Fortune 500—rely on their partnership with Energy Star to deliver cost-saving energy efficiency solutions.
EU Directive 92/75/EC established an energy consumption labelling scheme. The directive was implemented by several other directives thus most white goods, light bulb packaging and cars must have an EU Energy Label clearly displayed when offered for sale or rent. The energy efficiency of the appliance is rated in terms of a set of energy efficiency classes from A to G on the label, A being the most energy efficient, G the least efficient. The labels also give other useful information to the customer as they choose between various models. The information should also be given in catalogues and included by internet retailers on their websites.
Eco-labels and Green Stickers are labeling systems for food and consumer products. Ecolabels are voluntary, but green stickers are mandated by law; for example, in North America major appliances and automobiles use Energy Star. They are a form of sustainability measurement directed at consumers, intended to make it easy to take environmental concerns into account when shopping. Some labels quantify pollution or energy consumption by way of index scores or units of measurement, while others assert compliance with a set of practices or minimum requirements for sustainability or reduction of harm to the environment. Many ecolabels are focused on minimising the negative ecological impacts of primary production or resource extraction in a given sector or commodity through a set of good practices that are captured in a sustainability standard. Through a verification process, usually referred to as "certification", a farm, forest, fishery, or mine can show that it complies with a standard and earn the right to sell its products as certified through the supply chain, often resulting in a consumer-facing ecolabel.
A low-energy house is an energy efficient house that is designed without traditional heating and active cooling systems to use less energy than a conventional house. Such houses are a subset of low-energy buildings and serve as examples of sustainable architecture and energy-efficient landscaping. Often, low-energy houses feature active solar and passive solar building design techniques and components, which reduce the house's energy expenditure while hardly impacting the homeowner’s lifestyle. Examples of such houses are Passive house, BBC - Bâtiment Basse Consommation - Effinergie (France), “zero” carbon house (UK), Minergie (CH).
A House Energy Rating is the index of a building's thermal performance for residential homes in Australia.
Domestic housing in the United Kingdom presents a possible opportunity for achieving the 20% overall cut in UK carbon dioxide emissions targeted by the Government for 2010. However, the process of achieving that drop is proving problematic given the very wide range of age and condition of the UK housing stock.
Energy World was a demonstration project of 51 low-energy houses constructed in the Shenley Lodge area of Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. The project was promoted by the Milton Keynes Development Corporation and culminated in a public exhibition in August and October 1986 that attracted international interest. It was a significant landmark in the design and construction of low-energy housing, and in the development of energy efficiency evaluation tools. It has had a long-term impact on Government policy and within the national house-building industry, insofar as the progressive 'tightening up' of the energy section of the Building Regulations has largely been founded on this pioneering work.
A MEPS is a specification, containing a number of performance requirements for an energy-using device, that effectively limits the maximum amount of energy that may be consumed by a product in performing a specified task.
John Picard is an American architect, builder, entrepreneur as well as a building efficiency and sustainability expert. He is currently the founder and CEO of John Picard & Associates, an environmental and sustainability consulting firm working with international clients.
The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, or ACEEE, is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization. Founded in 1980, ACEEE's mission is to act as a catalyst to advance energy efficiency policies, programs, technologies, investments, and behaviors in order to help achieve greater economic prosperity, energy security, and environmental protection.
The energy policy of Malaysia is determined by the Malaysian Government, which address issues of energy production, distribution, and consumption. The Department of Electricity and Gas Supply acts as the regulator while other players in the energy sector include energy supply and service companies, research and development institutions and consumers. Government-linked companies Petronas and Tenaga Nasional Berhad are major players in Malaysia's energy sector.
The United States is the second-largest single consumer of energy in the world. The U.S. Department of Energy categorizes national energy use in four broad sectors: transportation, residential, commercial, and industrial.
Both the public and private sectors in the United Kingdom promote green building. Presently, there are already regulatory mechanisms in place that establish Britain's commitment to this kind of building construction. The government, for instance, set out a target that by 2016, all new homes will have zero carbon emission and it also includes a progressive tightening of energy efficiency regulations by 25 percent and 44 percent in 2010 and 2013, respectively. The UK Building Regulations set requirements for insulation levels and other aspects of sustainability in building construction.
Dan William Reicher is an American lawyer who was U.S. Assistant Secretary of Energy for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in the Clinton Administration. Reicher is currently Executive Director of the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University, a joint center of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford Law School, where he also holds faculty positions. Reicher joined Stanford in 2011 from Google, where he served since 2007 as Director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives for the company’s venture Google.org.
Energy rating may refer to:
In Australia and New Zealand, an energy rating label or energy rating is a label affixed to various appliances prior to retail sale, which allows consumers to compare the energy efficiency of product and allows consumers to know how much power a particular model will use to run. They allow consumers to compare the energy consumption of similar products, and factor lifetime running cost into their purchasing decision. The energy rating label is a mandatory comparison label under Australian regulations for store sales but not for products sold online. The label comprises an energy consumption figure for the appliance and a star rating. The energy consumption figure is an estimate of how much energy the appliance will use over a year, based on assumptions about “average usage”.
John A. "Skip" Laitner is an American-born economist, author and lecturer. He focuses on developing a more robust technology and behavioral characterization of energy efficiency resources for use in energy and climate economic policy models.
The house energy rating (HER) is a standard measure of comparison by which one can evaluate the energy efficiency of a new or an existing building. The comparison is generally done for energy requirements for heating and cooling of indoor space. The energy is the main criterion considered by any international building energy rating scheme but there are some other important factors such as production of greenhouse gases emission, indoor environment quality, cost efficiency and thermal comfort, which are considered by some schemes. Basically, the energy rating of a residential building provides detailed information on the energy consumption and the relative energy efficiency of the building. Hence, HERs inform consumers about the relative energy efficiency of homes and encourage them to use this information in making their house purchase decision. There are many energy rating tools by which one can calculate the energy performance of a building. Basically all these tools involve a numerical description or prepare a computer-based model for the rating of a building against standard occupancy and activity templates. So, HERS uses a computer-simulation based methods for assessing the energy efficiency of buildings under standard conditions and its potential for improvement.
Hariharan Chandrashekar is an Indian environmental economist, eco-entrepreneur, writer, and policy advocate and urban analyst since the early 1990s. He is Chairman, BCIL group of companies, Chairman, AltTech.Foundation, and Strategy Advisor for the new Bengaluru Central University, apart from being mentor for companies and institutions in the sustainability space.
