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Energy conservation is the effort to reduce wasteful energy consumption by using fewer energy services. This can be done by using energy more effectively or changing one's behavior to use less service. Energy conservation can be achieved through efficient energy use, which has some advantages, including a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a smaller carbon footprint, as well as cost, water, and energy savings.
The Rocky Mountain Institute, commonly abbreviated to RMI, is an organization in the United States co-founded by Amory Lovins dedicated to research, publication, consulting, and lecturing in the field of sustainability, with a focus on profitable innovations for energy and resource efficiency. RMI was established in 1982 and has grown into a broad-based institution with over 600 staff and an annual budget of $120+ million. RMI's work is independent and non-adversarial, with an emphasis on market-based solutions.
Green building refers to both a structure and the application of processes that are environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout a building's life-cycle: from planning to design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation, and demolition. This requires close cooperation of the contractor, the architects, the engineers, and the client at all project stages. The Green Building practice expands and complements the classical building design concerns of economy, utility, durability, and comfort. Green building also refers to saving resources to the maximum extent, including energy saving, land saving, water saving, material saving, etc., during the whole life cycle of the building, protecting the environment and reducing pollution, providing people with healthy, comfortable and efficient use of space, and being in harmony with nature. Buildings that live in harmony; green building technology focuses on low consumption, high efficiency, economy, environmental protection, integration and optimization.’
A low-energy house is characterized by an energy-efficient design and technical features which enable it to provide high living standards and comfort with low energy consumption and carbon emissions. Traditional heating and active cooling systems are absent, or their use is secondary. Low-energy buildings may be viewed as examples of sustainable architecture. Low-energy houses often have active and passive solar building design and components, which reduce the house's energy consumption and minimally impact the resident's lifestyle. Throughout the world, companies and non-profit organizations provide guidelines and issue certifications to guarantee the energy performance of buildings and their processes and materials. Certifications include passive house, BBC—Bâtiment Basse Consommation—Effinergie (France), zero-carbon house (UK), and Minergie (Switzerland).
A Zero-Energy Building (ZEB), also known as a Net Zero-Energy (NZE) building, is a building with net zero energy consumption, meaning the total amount of energy used by the building on an annual basis is equal to the amount of renewable energy created on the site or in other definitions by renewable energy sources offsite, using technology such as heat pumps, high efficiency windows and insulation, and solar panels.
Domestic housing in the United Kingdom presents a possible opportunity for achieving the 20% overall cut in UK greenhouse gas 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 Saving Trust is a British organization devoted to promoting energy efficiency, energy conservation, and the sustainable use of energy, thereby reducing carbon dioxide emissions and helping to prevent man-made climate change. It was founded in the United Kingdom as a government-sponsored initiative in 1992, following the global Earth Summit.
An energy service company (ESCO) is a company that provides a broad range of energy solutions including designs and implementation of energy savings projects, retrofitting, energy conservation, energy infrastructure outsourcing, power generation, energy supply, and risk management.
Efficient energy use, sometimes simply called energy efficiency, is the process of reducing the amount of energy required to provide products and services. For example, insulating a building allows it to use less heating and cooling energy to achieve and maintain a thermal comfort. Installing light-emitting diode bulbs, fluorescent lighting, or natural skylight windows reduces the amount of energy required to attain the same level of illumination compared to using traditional incandescent light bulbs. Improvements in energy efficiency are generally achieved by adopting a more efficient technology or production process or by application of commonly accepted methods to reduce energy losses.
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An Energy Rebate Program, or Energy Credit Incentive Program, provides a cash rebate program for customers planning to install new, energy efficient information technology (IT) equipment or cooling systems. These programs push companies to construct more energy efficient data centers, or to consolidate compute, storage and networking resources via virtualization technologies.
The International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol (IPMVP®) defines standard terms and suggests best practise for quantifying the results of energy efficiency investments and increase investment in energy and water efficiency, demand management and renewable energy projects. The IPMVP was developed by a coalition of international organizations starting in 1994-1995. The Protocol has become the national measurement and verification standard in the United States and many other countries, and has been translated into 10 languages. IPMVP is published in three volumes, most widely downloaded and translated is IPMVP Volume 1 Concepts and Options for Determining Energy and Water Savings. A major driving force was the need for a common protocol to verify savings claimed by Energy Service Companies (ESCOs) implementing Energy Conservation Measures (ECM). The protocol is a framework to determine water and energy savings associated with ECMs.
A Deep energy retrofit can be broadly categorized as an energy conservation measure in an existing building also leading to an overall improvement in the building performance. While there is no exact definition for a deep energy retrofit, it can be defined as a whole-building analysis and construction process, that aims at achieving on-site energy use minimization in a building by 50% or more compared to the baseline energy use making use of existing technologies, materials and construction practices. Such a retrofit reaps multifold benefits beyond energy cost savings, unlike conventional energy retrofit. It may also involve remodeling the building to achieve a harmony in energy, indoor air quality, durability, and thermal comfort. An integrated project delivery method is recommended for a deep energy retrofit project. An over-time approach in a deep energy retrofitting project provides a solution to the large upfront costs problem in all-at-once execution of the project.
DERs are projects that create new, valuable assets from existing residences, by bringing homes into alignment with the expectations of the 21st century
ISO 50001Energy management systems - Requirements with guidance for use, is an international standard created by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). It supports organizations in all sectors to use energy more efficiently through the development of an energy Management System. The standard specifies the requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining and improving an energy management system, whose purpose is to enable an organization to follow a systematic approach in achieving continual improvement of energy performance, including energy efficiency, energy security, energy use and consumption.
Sustainable refurbishment describes working on existing buildings to improve their environmental performance using sustainable methods and materials. A refurbishment or retrofit is defined as: "any work to a building over and above maintenance to change its capacity, function or performance' in other words, any intervention to adjust, reuse, or upgrade a building to suit new conditions or requirements". Refurbishment can be done to a part of a building, an entire building, or a campus. Sustainable refurbishment takes this a step further to modify the existing building to perform better in terms of its environmental impact and its occupants' environment.
Sustainable Energy Utility (SEU) is a community-based model of development founded on energy conservation and the use of renewables, seeking to permanently decrease the use of source materials, water, and energy. The model prescribes the creation of independent and financially self-sufficient non-profit entities for energy sustainability through conservation, efficiency, and end-user based decentralized renewable energy in an effort to address concerns about climate change, rising energy prices, inequity of energy availability, and a lack of community governance of energy development. The SEU model was developed by Dr. J. Byrne at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware. The Foundation for Renewable Energy and Environment (FREE) is implementing versions of the model.
Public plans for energy efficient refurbishment are put in place by states to encourage building owners to renovate their properties in a way that increases their energy performance. As financing represents the most important obstacle to this type of renovation, the plans favour financial incentives in the form of loans or grants. Various institutions can be involved in the process, such as ministries, banks, firms, or energy services companies (ESCOs).
The INTEGER Millennium House is a demonstration house in Watford, England that opened to the public in 1998. It was renamed The Smart Home after being refurbished in 2013. The house was originally intended to showcase innovations in design and construction, building intelligence, and environmental performance. The INTEGER design included many innovative features, including environmental technology such as a green roof and a grey water recycling system, home automation that included a building management system and an intelligent security system, and innovative technical systems such as under-floor trench heating. In 2013, the house was refurbished and retrofitted with a variety of new and upgraded features, including a building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) array, which altogether halved its carbon emissions and increased its energy efficiency by 50%. Since its creation, the house has garnered numerous awards, appeared on Tomorrow's World on BBC Television, hosted thousands of visitors, and influenced mainstream construction.
Energiesprong is a program that originated in the Netherlands that introduced and retrofitted houses that satisfy energy efficient standards. It has since been implemented in the United Kingdom, the United States, France, and Canada. The program typically consists of snapping a shell of panels to the outside of a building to increase its thermal efficiency.
References
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- ↑ "Crazy Enough to Try the Impossible - UnSectored". Archived from the original on 2012-02-28. Retrieved 2013-05-24.
- ↑ "Social Sector". McKinsey & Company. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
- ↑ "Taking on Climate Change One Bulb at a Time". Planetforward.org. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
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- ↑ "Brenden Millstein - Echoing Green". Echoinggreen.org. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
- ↑ "Raphael Rosen and Brenden Millstein". Forbes.com. Archived from the original on December 31, 2012. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
- ↑ "For Profit, for Good". Images.businessweek.com. Archived from the original on 2012-06-24. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
- ↑ Chediak, Mark (2018-03-13). "Efficiency Startup Gets Funding to Cut Energy Use by Buildings". Bloomberg Technology.
- ↑ "Carbon Lighthouse: Deep Retrofits, Quick Paybacks". greentechmedia.com. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
- ↑ "Carbon Lighthouse Retrofit Identifies $1M in Energy Savings - Energy Manager Today". Energymanagertoday.com. 23 January 2013. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
- ↑ "Hundred-Year Tune up - Real Estate Bisnow (San Francisco)". Archived from the original on 2013-06-28.
- ↑ "Making Carbon Zero Profitable". Paloalto.patch.com. 20 December 2011. Retrieved 5 October 2018.