Housing is at the core of the European Union's prosperity as it is important to achieve energy saving targets and to combat climate change whilst contributing to energy saving and security. During the programming period 2007–2013, the European Union Cohesion Policy has started playinga new and important role in the process of supporting investments into energy efficiency measures in the housing sector. The increasing need for effective renovation of housing stock, which was constructed in the period when energy resources were cheap, is most notable in Central and Eastern Europe. The use of the European Union fund for the renovation of housing stock in Lithuania servers as a basis for assessing the impact of such investments on energy saving, natural gas import and greenhouse gas emissions.
Housing is at the core of the European Union's prosperity as it is important to achieve energy saving targets and to combat climate change whilst contributing to energy saving and security. During the programming period 2007–2013, the European Union Cohesion Policy has started playinga new and important role in the process of supporting investments into energy efficiency measures in the housing sector. The increasing need for effective renovation of housing stock, which was constructed in the period when energy resources were cheap, is most notable in Central and Eastern Europe. The use of the European Union fund for the renovation of housing stock in Lithuania servers as a basis for assessing the impact of such investments on energy saving, natural gas import and greenhouse gas emissions.
"Energy consumption is of great interest to manufacturing companies. Beyond considering individual processes and machines, the perspective on process chains and factories as a whole holds major potentials for energy efficiency improvements. To exploit these potentials, dynamic interactions of different processes as well as auxiliary equipment (e.g. compressed air generation) need to be taken into account. In addition, planning and controlling manufacturing systems require balancing technical, economic and environmental objectives. Therefore, an innovative and comprehensive methodology--with a generic energy flow-oriented manufacturing simulation environment as a core element--is developed and embedded into a step-by-step application cycle. The concept is applied in its entirety to a wide range of case studies such as aluminum die casting, weaving mills, and printed circuit board assembly in order to demonstrate the broad applicability and the benefits that can be achieved"--provided by publisher
In 2008 the CPUC adopted the California Energy Efficiency Strategic Plan, which recognized the critical role of financing in helping California to meet its energy efficiency goals – especially for obtaining efficiency improvements to existing homes, businesses, and other facilities. In Decision D.09-09-047 (2009) the Commission specifically directed Energy Division staff, in consultation with knowledgeable financial experts, to prepare an assessment and plan for ensuring the most promising and effective financing instruments are available for energy efficiency investments. Later in 2009 the State Legislature enacted AB 758 (Statutes of 2009) that directed 1) the California Energy Commission (CEC) to develop a comprehensive program to achieve greater energy savings in the state's existing residential and nonresidential building stock, and 2) the CPUC to investigate the ability of electric and gas utilities to provide energy efficiency financing options to their customers to implement the program to be developed by the CEC. The Energy Division engaged a consulting team, Harcourt Brown & Carey (HB&C), to accomplish both the Commission's and Legislature's directions to identify meaningful financing approaches for efficiency. HB&C conducted a needs and gaps assessment, and has made findings and recommendations for the most effective approaches to facilitate capital investment in efficiency. Energy Division staff and HB&C together conducted public workshops in October 2010 to explore issues, needs, and promising ideas. Since then the consultant team has documented specific mechanisms, and compared them to both the scale of investment needed in California and the specific needs of borrower market segments. The attached report presents their findings
AbstractThe Environmental Protection Agency classifies healthcare as one of the leading energy-consuming industries. Extensive energy is needed around the clock in healthcare institutions for lighting, ventilation, and operating medical equipment. However, there is a growing concern over the sustainability of energy utilization by healthcare institutions worldwide. This narrative review thus seeks to examine energy efficiency and utilization in healthcare institutions and energy management and conservation techniques and make recommendations for future optimal usage. The paper notes that healthcare institutions use different quantities of energy from diverse sources, including hydropower, biomass, solar energy, and wind power. However, energy consumption varies from one institution to another, with the number of beds and intensity of healthcare operations, with an average of 0.27 MWh m−2. Moreover, this review also identified various techniques and measures to enhance energy efficiency, such as the variant refrigerant flow technology and the combination of renewable energy sources with diesel generators to reduce the cost of electricity. Overall, healthcare institutions need energy management systems such as automated energy monitoring technologies, to check the systems' efficiency. The same techniques can also help Middle Eastern healthcare institutions with efficient energy utilization. Ultimately, the literature review aims to introduce an approach that focuses on reducing site-level consumption of energy while increasing the quality of the energy used and hence, helping reduce energy costs while conserving the environment.
The UK Government has unveiled an ambitious retrofit programme that seeks significant improvement to the energy efficiency of the housing stock. High quality data on the energy efficiency of buildings and their related energy demand is critical to supporting and targeting investment in energy efficiency. Using existing home improvement programmes over the past 15 years, the UK Government has brought together data on energy efficiency retrofits in approximately 13 million homes into the Homes Energy Efficiency Database (HEED), along with annual metered gas and electricity use for the period of 2004–2007. This paper describes the HEED sample and assesses its representativeness in terms of dwelling characteristics, the energy demand of different energy performance levels using linked gas and electricity meter data, along with an analysis of the impact retrofit measures has on energy demand. Energy savings are shown to be associated with the installation of loft and cavity insulation, and glazing and boiler replacement. The analysis illustrates this source of 'in-action' data can be used to provide empirical estimates of impacts of energy efficiency retrofit on energy demand and provides a source of empirical data from which to support the development of national housing energy efficiency retrofit policies.
Despite the fossil fuel fired power generatingplants being the major producers of greenhouse gases, it isclearly evident that renewable sources of energy are not going toreplace them any time soon. There is a general consensusamongst scientists and governments that our climate is changingat an unprecedented rate, and it is argued that it is largely causedby greenhouse gas emissions from economic activity that isunlikely to be significantly scaled down through forums andprotocols. Many studies indicate that a higher concentration ofgreenhouse gases in the atmosphere, particularly carbon dioxide,is the primary cause of global warming that is driving climatechange. While awaiting for renewable energy to make furthertechnological advances, improve its efficiency, and place itself asa cost effective contender to conventional power generation,energy efficiency and conservation are currently the leastexpensive alternative for power and process industry to meet agrowing demand for cleaner energy. For all the renewable energyresources put together, renewable energy accounts for 19.1% oftotal electricity production, of which 85% is hydro-electricity.Energy efficiency and renewable energy should remain the twinpillars of sustainable energy policy [1]. In many countries, energyefficiency is also seen to have a national security benefit becauseit can be used to reduce the level of energy imports from foreigncountries and may slow down the rate at which domestic energyresources are depleted.In this paper, we focus on the current state of the electricalsystem efficiency from generation to utilisation, and identify thecritical areas where efficiency can be enhanced through currenttechnology, design and operational practice.
Housing is at the core of the European Union's prosperity as it is important to achieve energy saving targets and to combat climate change whilst contributing to energy saving and security. During the programming period 2007–2013, the European Union Cohesion Policy has started playinga new and important role in the process of supporting investments into energy efficiency measures in the housing sector. The increasing need for effective renovation of housing stock, which was constructed in the period when energy resources were cheap, is most notable in Central and Eastern Europe. The use of the European Union fund for the renovation of housing stock in Lithuania servers as a basis for assessing the impact of such investments on energy saving, natural gas import and greenhouse gas emissions.
A procura pela redução do consumo e dos custos de energia, nas organizações, levou à implementação de sistemas de gestão de energia, que numa primeira fase possibilitou a monitorização automática dos consumos. Contudo, consequência de obrigatoriedades legais, da redução de custos e de políticas energéticas de consciencialização ambiental, existe uma procura crescente de ferramentas, integradas nos sistemas de gestão, que auxiliem a atingir os objetivos de melhoria da eficiência energética. Em particular, a recente norma 50001, muito focada na eficiência energética, conta com número crescente de empresas que procuram certificar os seus sistemas de gestão de energia de acordo com esta norma.Nesse sentido, este projeto de dissertação pretende analisar as soluções existentes no mercado, idealizar e especificar um módulo de gestão de energia compatível com a norma, que permita gerir a energia de acordo com os seus requisitos, examinando os principais consumos, criando planos de melhoria e avaliando os seus resultados. Posteriormente, e ainda no âmbito desta dissertação, será desenvolvida uma parte do módulo 50001 de forma a validar os conceitos, a especificação e a arquitetura idealizada. ; The search of energy consumption and cost reductions, in organizations, led to the implementation of energy management systems, that allowed automatic consumption monitoring. However, consequence of the harsher legislation, the search for cost reduction and the energy policies focused on the environment protection, there is a growing demand for tools, integrated in management systems, that support the pursuit of energy efficiency improvement goals.In this sense, this master dissertation project intends to perform an analysis of the current available market solutions, the idealization and specification of a management module compatible with the standard, that allows for main energy uses examination according to the norm, creating improvement plans and evaluating their results. Finally, within the context of this dissertation, part of the 50001 module will be developed so that the concepts, specification and architecture can be validated.
Energy efficiency in South African industry has only recently started receiving attention due to the low cost of South Africa's electricity, and a not too distant history of isolation leading up to democratic elections in 1994.This study shows that strong incentives exist for energy efficiency improvement in South African industry, in particular, the potential for increasing profit, the need to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the need to maintain economic competitiveness, and the need to delay the cost of new peak-load electricity generation facilities. Barriers to the implementation of energy efficiency projects need to be anticipated and addressed by managers, policy makers and energy efficiency practitioners. In particular, the lesson from the case study in this paper showed how organisation structure, financial controls and culture, can be barriers to the implementation of energy projects. By ensuring the support of top management, and by the initiation of an energy management program early on, these barriers can be avoided and results and recommendations from an energy assessment can feed into a receptive management system.
This Methodology Booklet provides a comprehensive review and methodology guiding principles for constructing energy efficiency indicators, with illustrative examples of application to individual countries. It reviews work done by international agencies and national government in constructing meaningful energy efficiency indicators that help policy makers to assess changes in energy efficiency over time. Building on past OECD experience and best practices, and the knowledge of these countries' institutions, relevant sources of information to construct an energy indicator database are identified. A framework based on levels of hierarchy of indicators -- spanning from aggregate, macro level to disaggregated end-use level metrics -- is presented to help shape the understanding of assessing energy efficiency. In each sector of activity: industry, commercial, residential, agriculture and transport, indicators are presented and recommendations to distinguish the different factors affecting energy use are highlighted. The methodology booklet addresses specifically issues that are relevant to developing indicators where activity is a major factor driving energy demand. A companion spreadsheet tool is available upon request.
