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Buildings 2014


Overview

Question
How can we increase building energy efficiency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

Submit proposals:  https://www.climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/1300203
Deadline:  July 20, 2014, at 11:59:59 PM U.S. Eastern Time
Rules:  All entrants must agree to the 2014 Contest Rules.
Prizes: Judges Choice and Popular Choice winners will be connected with and able to present to people who can support the implementation of their proposal, which may include policy makers, business executives, NGO and foundation officials, scientists, and others.  They will be recognized and publicized by the MIT Climate CoLab and invited to showcase their proposals at a conference held at MIT fall 2014, where a $10,000 Grand Prize will be awarded.  (See 2013 conference)

Related 2014 contests:  

Guidelines from Advisors and Fellows

Opportunity/challenge

Residential and commercial buildings hold the potential to reduce approximately 29% of the projected baseline emissions by 2020 which is the highest cost-effective reduction achievable by a single sector (IPCC AR4). Measures to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from buildings broadly fall under three categories: reducing energy consumption and embodied energy in buildings, using lower-carbon fuel sources such as a higher proportion of renewable energy, or preventing the emissions of non-CO2 GHG gases (IPCC AR4). Reducing energy consumption and embodied energy of  new and existing buildings is the most cost-effective and arguably the largest opportunity for reducing emissions (IPCC AR4).

However, the building sector presents some unique challenges such as the diffuse nature of the building stock, inertia in adoption of new technologies, and availability of benchmarking data for validating efficiency improvements. A comprehensive summary of actions that have been proposed to increase building efficiency, along with estimates of the amount these measures could reduce future emissions, can be found in IPCC, Climate Change 2007: Working Group III: Mitigation of Climate Change, Chapter 6: Residential and commercial buildings.

In the past few years, there has been a rapid proliferation of digital technologies in the built environment, coupled with the availability of large amounts of energy and other performance related data. These developments open the door for new and innovative solutions to take root, and hold significant promise for rapidly scaling-up energy efficiency efforts to achieve deep, cost-effective GHG mitigation.

Key issues

There is already a sizable potential for greenhouse gas mitigation in the buildings sector that is not being realized because of significant technological, economic, cultural, political, and behavioral barriers. Table 6.5 of IPCC, Climate Change 2007: Working Group III: Mitigation of Climate Change, Chapter 6: Residential and commercial building presents the taxonomy of barriers that hinder the penetration of energy efficient technologies/practices in the buildings sector. These can be broadly categorized as:

1. Financial costs/benefits: Higher up-front costs for more efficient equipment; Lack of access to financing; Energy subsidies; Lack of internalization of environmental, health and other external costs);

2. Hidden costs/benefits: Costs and risks due to potential incompatibilities, performance risks, transaction costs etc; Poor power quality, particularly in some developing countries;

3. Market failures: Limitations of the typical building design process; Fragmented market structure; Landlord/tenant split and misplaced incentives; Administrative and regulatory barriers (e.g., in the incorporation of distributed generation technologies); Imperfect information;

4. Behavioural and organizational non-optimalities: Tendency to ignore small opportunities for energy conservation; Organizational failures (e.g., internal split incentives); Non-payment and electricity theft; Tradition, behaviour, lack of awareness and lifestyle; Corruption.

New technical and policy approaches that represent an advance beyond established methods, that can address these challenges are especially encouraged in this contest. Specific solutions such as, energy data and ancillary benefits of energy efficiency, are highlighted as examples of opportunities that have the potential to help overcome those barrier, among other examples. A question for proposals to consider is: What innovative energy efficiency technologies or policy solutions can help overcome these barriers?

Highlighted Opportunities

i. Energy Data

There is significant innovation around leveraging utility and other data sources to improve the operational efficiency of buildings and these initiatives broadly fall into two categories--behavioral and control solutions. Control solutions range from energy information systems / home energy displays, building analytics, and emerging algorithms to prioritize households/buildings likely to enroll in energy efficiency programs. Although many advances have been made in this area, there still remains a paucity of data solutions at higher temporal resolutions. For example, smart meters have the potential to obtain and provide data at much higher data transmission rates. With on-board data processing (i.e., at the meter or in the home), these data could greatly enhance the effectiveness of the aforementioned control solutions and enable further on-site services/capabilities, such as:

In addition to these control solutions, novel behavioral energy efficiency measures are also beginning to produce substantial reductions in energy consumption globally. Particularly in the residential sector where consumers’ usage is directly linked to their energy costs, behavioral psychological approaches such as displaying household energy use relative to neighbors, spreading awareness of plug load energy costs, and gamification are all helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through catalyzing behavioral shifts. Behavioral-derived energy efficiency depends on engagement and identification of easy, high potential savings measures for customers to take (e.g. changing the filter on an HVAC system). Successful behavioral energy efficiency proposals will address the engagement, impact, and convenience of the behavioral solution.

In summary, one key question to consider as you develop your proposal is how these recent advances in data accessibility can be utilized in new ways to produce greater efficiency gains in new and existing buildings?

ii. Ancillary benefits of energy efficiency

There is also the potential to leverage data in order to crosslink energy efficiency with its ancillary non-energy benefits  that people value. These benefits can range from water savings to health and well-being improvements. For example, a growing number of studies are showing numerous health benefits from energy efficiency programs. For example, In 2008, New Zealand initiated a program to improve the energy use of low-income households in the country over a four-year period . The evaluation of the initial 40,000 homes retrofitted in the first year showed the dramatic improvements, including a 43% reduction in hospital admissions attributable to respiratory ailments; a 39% reduction in days lost at work; and a 23% reduction in days lost at school. The composite evaluation of the program showed that the costs of the program were fully covered by energy savings , and the health benefits were nine times greater than the energy benefits (Healthy Housing).

However, these kinds of ancillary benefits can be difficult to currently quantify for a number of reasons, including a paucity of data, and significant variations by region. But with the relevant data and analytical tools becoming available, it might be possible to facilitate better valuation of these benefits in the near future. This will result in a much stronger case for buildings energy efficiency, one that goes beyond purely cost savings, and can appeal to the consumers and utilities in different ways. For examples, water savings from energy efficiency measures can be critical to maintaining reliable power supply in drought prone regions. Air quality improvements from energy efficiency measures might appeal better to people living  in regions that struggle with air quality issues.

A key question in this area is: How might data from other fields such as public health be integrated with building energy performance to significantly enhance energy efficiency efforts?

Challenges to efficiency investments that can yield positive returns

Though many building efficiency investments provide a positive return on investment and thus would seem attractive even from a purely financial perspective, such investments are often not made. There are a variety of reasons why this is the case.

in many cases, building owners are best positioned to make efficiency investments, but building tenants are often responsible for paying energy bills. There is thus a misalignment between the party in a position to invest and the one in a position to capture the returns on investment (often referred to as the ‘split incentive’ issue).

Another reason could be that the full return on efficiency investments is typically achieved over 15 or 20 years. But the relevant payback time for building owners is often shorter. The average homeowner, for example, only stays in a house for 7 years.

A final challenge is developing financing mechanisms that help homeowners to borrow funds that can defray the up front costs of efficiency investments. Since such a large percentage of building efficiency investments yield positive returns, this is a particularly promising area.

How can investments that yield positive returns be encouraged in the face of such obstacles?

What can be done to incentive / push forward energy efficiency programmes as never done before?

National standards

In 2002, the European Union passed an Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, which set standards for certifying buildings and established quality assurance procedures  in order to further increase the push for EU buildings energy efficiency following the EPBD. Originally from 2002, this Directive was recently recasted, on the 19th of May of 2010, as 2010/31/EU Directive.

In 2012, Australia followed suit and released for review a draft National Building Energy Standard-Setting, Assessment and Rating Framework.

However, the United States and many other countries lack such a national framework.

They key questions here are: What would it take to establish efficiency standards at a national level in these countries? Action by the federal government? Or could a combination of state/provincial governments, along with industry stakeholders, put such a framework into place? What should such a national framework cover?

Creating an efficiency brand

Renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and geothermal are perceived by many consumers as pushing forward new technological horizons and representing the wave of the future. Efficiency, by contrast, is seen by many as a throwback that involves old technologies, since a key activity is retrofitting existing structures.

Given this reality, a central issue is: Can the brand image of energy efficiency be upgraded to increase awareness and create a more favorable public perception?

Resources for Proposal Authors

You may wish to read the references listed below that will help you structuring your proposal.

We are encouraging and looking for proposals with new and innovative topics that take current efforts in the buildings energy efficiency arena to the next level.

Although the scope of this contest is anywhere in the world, conditions differ significantly between developed and developing economies, and much activity in building efficiency may be undertaken at the local level. Proposals may thus focus on a specific country or local area. If your proposal has a particular geographic focus, please make that clear in the description.

If you prepare a proposal with a specific geographic focus, you may wish to consult the IPCC's estimates of the mitigation potential of building efficiency initiatives in various countries and regions in Table 6.2 of IPCC, Climate Change 2007: Working Group III: Mitigation of Climate Change, Chapter 6: Residential and commercial buildings.

Proposals can either include new buildings or existing buildings, as well as, residential and commercial buildings.
 

References

If you'd like to suggest a new reference, please add it as a comment on the Discussion board or send a message to the Fellows:

 

Contest picture source: The World Bank