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In order to redefine the influence of the energy and technological transitions upon the challenge of climate change this paper shows that buildings are key agents. This paper discusses the importance of addressing building energy efficiency in a holistic and transformational way, to avoid that incremental measures increase the lock-in effect. Moreover, policies should consider a demand-side energy transition, contrary to today's discourse, where the supply side and energy production are prominent. Finally, the most important issues in this energy transition are intergenerational divide and justice. ; Dr. Cabeza would like to thank the Catalan Government for the quality accreditation given to her research group GREiA (2017 SGR 1537). GREiA is a certified agent TECNIO in the category of technology developers from the Government of Catalonia. This work is partially supported by ICREA under the ICREA Academia programme.

AbstractPolicies to improve energy access and energy efficiency are often discussed, designed and assessed in isolation from each other. In this paper, we highlight possible synergies in these two domains of policy making by looking specifically at some key household end uses that are the first to be met once improved access has been provided. By building in efficiency considerations at the very inception of activities aimed at improving access, effective energy supply available is potentially increased, the level of energy services that can be provided by the existing capacity and infrastructure or from existing budgets available is also enhanced, and the potential for reducing the cost for those populations for which cost has the highest consideration is also improved. In particular, we recommend two areas where policy maybe leveraged to benefit both access and efficiency objectives, first in the setting of standards, labels and codes and second coupling energy subsidies for access with rebates or grants for more efficient end use devices.

"Die unterschiedlichen Entwicklungspfade und Transformationsmodelle der postsozialistischen Staaten sind ein zentrales Forschungsthema. Die wirtschafts- und politikwissenschaftliche Literatur wählt häufig den Energiesektor, um die Haupttrends der Transformation zu verdeutlichen. Im Folgenden werden Studien und Analysen zur Energiepolitik und Energiewirtschaft in Ostmitteleuropa und Russland sowie Untersuchungen zum EU-Beitritt und dessen Auswirkungen auf den Energiesektor diskutiert. Die hohe Belastung der Umwelt durch den Energiesektor sowie die geringe Energieeffizienz stehen im Mittelpunkt." (Autorenreferat)

While on a world-wide scale Hungary is a key greenhouse gas emitter neither on an absolute nor on a per capita basis, Hungary recognizes the significance of limiting its greenhouse gas emissions. This paper is based on the Hungarian contribution to a two-year, ten-country research effort, funded by UNEP, aimed at developing a state-of-the-art methodology for the understanding of the economics of greenhouse gas abatement. This paper concentrates on the challenges of the implementation of greenhouse gas mitigation measures. While Hungary has an important cost-effective potential for reducing the emission of carbon dioxide by improving energy efficiency, the implementation of this mitigation strategy is a complex and challenging task. The implementation and financing of energy efficiency measures require the concerted targeting of close to 4 million households, and a wide variety of actors, including banks, the industry, government, international and multilateral organisations, and NGOs. Thus, developing an implementation strategy requires a clear understanding of the existing structures, barriers, and experiences to date. This paper provides a strategic framework for the implementation of demand-side energy efficiency, and examines a case study, the tool of energy efficiency labelling and standards, within this framework.

Understanding the development of the trends in the ownership of different appliances in a historic context in various countries of the world can not only provide important insights for understanding the dynamics of adoption of different appliances, but can also help with foresight: how the future may develop for these or other, new appliances on the market. Although available literature in household appliances energy consumption, energy management and energy efficiency has seen some advances, there is a clear lack in the literature on household appliance ownership. In this paper, historic data is gathered and analysed for several groups of appliance types (white appliances, brown appliances and small appliances) for 12 countries representing four continents, when available since 1970 to date. Countries representing different parts of the world were selected to present an overview on household appliances ownership and energy consumption. One of the first conclusions of the study is that there is little or no information in many countries from South America, Africa or South Asia. Refrigerators, freezers and washing machines ownership are an example of most other white goods. Brown goods appeared in the market at very different time, depending on each one (from the 70s to the late 90s) and their ownership growth is much higher than for the previous ones. Most of small line appliances ownership has not reached saturation yet. ; The work is partially funded by the Spanish government (ENE2015–64117-C5-1-R (MINECO/FEDER)). The authors would like to thank the Catalan Government for the quality accreditation given to their research group GREA and DIOPMA (2014 SGR 123 and 2014 SGR 1543, respectively). GREA and DIOPMA are certified agents TECNIO in the category of technology developers from the Government of Catalonia. Dr. Camila Barreneche would like to thank Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad de España for grant Juan de la Cierva, FJCI-2014–22886.

Energy planning is fundamental for energy planners to accurately plan for the future and to utilize the sustainable and renewable energy resources to a larger extent. But how well are we able to project the future? In this paper, past projections of global and regional energy consumption are compared to real data. The conclusions found that when comparing energy consumption projections with real registered data projections in 1977 substantially overestimated energy demand in the future, while later projections in the 80 s and 90 s were closer to reality, slightly underestimating real growth in demand. Although projections made in these two decades for total demand were typically slightly underestimated, per capita projections were still overestimating real trends. Considering the building sector, residential and commercial, energy consumption was underestimated in WEO 1982 and WEO 1994; and again, when per capita values are considered, higher values than reality were projected. ; The work is partially funded by the Spanish government (ENE2015-64117-C5-1-R (MINECO/FEDER)). The authors would like to thank the Catalan Government for the quality accreditation given to their research group GREA (2014 SGR 123) and research group DIOPMA (2014 SGR 1543). GREA and DIOPMA are certified agents TECNIO in the category of technology developers from the Government of Catalonia. Dr. Camila Barreneche would like to thank Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad de España for Grant Juan de la Cierva, FJCI-2014-22886.

This paper aims to complete and complement the information available on the past trends of thermal energy consumption in residential buildings and its drivers for Europe, as a continent and for the different countries. This paper follows the drivers identified in a previous one for the heating and cooling energy consumption, decomposing this energy demand into key drivers based on a Kaya identity approach: number of households, persons per household, floor space per capita and specific energy consumption for residential heating and cooling. Results show that all drivers did follow a consistent trend at global, regional and country level during the studied period of time, but the heating and cooling energy consumption did not follow the same trend if it was considered at global, regional or country level, showing that the energy consumption is very much influenced by all its drivers and does not follow the same trend as the specific energy consumption. Moreover, similar trends for each indicator can be found when evaluated at country or regional level, therefore as expected when aggregating data trends can be seen but details and particularities (both for the different countries and for the different studied years) are lost. ; The work is partially funded by the Spanish government (ENE2015-64117-C5-1-R (MINECO/FEDER)). The authors would like to thank the Catalan Government for the quality accreditation given to their research group GREA (2014 SGR 123) and research group DIOPMA (2014 SGR 1543). Dr. Camila Barreneche would like to thank Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad de España for Grant Juan de la Cierva, FJCI-2014-22886.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a source of information on thermal energy use in buildings, its drivers, and their past, present and future trends on a global and regional basis. Energy use in buildings forms a large part of global and regional energy demand. The importance of heating and cooling in total building energy use is very diverse with this share varying between 18% and 73%. Biomass is still far the dominant fuel when a global picture is considered; the role of electricity is substantially growing, and the direct use of coal is disappearing from this sector, largely replaced by electricity and natural gas in the most developed regions. This paper identifies the different drivers of heating and cooling energy demand, and decomposes this energy demand into key drivers based on a Kaya identity approach: number of households, persons per household, floor space per capita and specific energy consumption for residential heating and cooling; and GDP, floor space per GDP, and specific energy consumption for commercial buildings. This paper also reviews the trends in the development of these drivers for the present, future – and for which data were available, for the past – in 11 world regions as well as globally. Results show that in a business-as-usual scenario, total residential heating and cooling energy use is expected to more or less stagnate, or slightly decrease, in the developed parts of the world. In contrast, commercial heating and cooling energy use will grow in each world region. Finally, the results show that per capita total final residential building energy use has been stagnating in the vast majority of world regions for the past three decades, despite the very significant increases in energy service levels in each of these regions. ; The work is partially funded by the Spanish Government (ENE2011–28269-C03-02 and ENE2011-13511-E). The authors would like to thank the Catalan Government for the quality accreditation given to their research group GREA (2014 SGR 123) and research group DIOPMA (2014 SGR 1543)

Energy demand globally has been increasing over the last few decades and, in order to achieve climate neutrality in the EU by 2050, the demand for energy needs to be reduced without affecting the comfort of the citizens. Therefore, the role of energy efficiency measures and renewable energy use has become pivotal in energy science. However, designing policies related to the promotion of energy efficiency or usage of renewable energy depends immensely on the evidence/predictions for a set of scenarios up to a certain timeline that can be provided by the energy demand models. In other words, the findings of energy models can help in identifying the focus area of the policies. Thus, different sector-specific energy demand models can showcase the impact of different policy measures on final energy demand. Since the policy-design in a way depends on the findings of energy demand models, we need to understand whether the demand models can incorporate all of the key parameters and needs of model users (such as policymakers, academicians, NGOs, etc.) into consideration while calculating final energy demand. Thus, to understand the different user needs, this study has used a three-tier methodological approach consisting of a focused literature review (conducted under SENTINEL Deliverables D3.1 and D1.2), an online survey and online interviews with different user groups, and lastly, stakeholder workshops. This three-tier methodological approach unfolds mainly two categories of user-needs: generic/transversal user-needs, and sector-specific user-needs. With the help of four different demand models used in SENTINEL, most of the user-needs are taken into account and this report discusses in detail how individual user-needs are getting addressed through demand models. Some of the user-needs (for example 'energy demand transition between 2030- 2050' and 'role of renewable electricity to meet demand') can be addressed with the SENTINEL demand models without requiring any upgrades of the models. However, for some of the needs ...

Since appliances consume a large fraction of the residential final energy consumption, analysing the impact and trends in penetration and ownership of appliances are targets of interest to researchers, companies and policy makers. However, there is a lack of published data based on the study of appliance penetration or ownership comparing different countries trends and assessing different appliances families. The data is usually found in percentages related to energy use or other factors, or in national directive documents written in local languages. The main aim of this paper is to analyse the trends in appliances penetration and/or ownership in the residential buildings sector providing access to the data of ten countries representing different world areas, and 20 appliances which fell into three distinct appliance categories (white goods, brown goods and small appliances), in a comparable framework. Penetration data is given for Australia, Austria, Denmark, France, Spain, UK, and USA; and ownership data for Australia, China, Hungary, Japan and USA. ; The work is partially funded by the Spanish government (ENE2015-64117-C5-1-R). The authors would like to thank the Catalan Government for the quality accreditation given to their research group GREA and DIOPMA (2014 SGR 123 and 2014 SGR 1543, respectively). Dr. Camila Barreneche would like to thank Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad de España for grant Juan de la Cierva, FJCI-2014–22886.

The building sector is responsible for 39% of process-related greenhouse gas emissions globally, making net- or nearly-zero energy buildings pivotal for reaching climate neutrality. This article reviews recent advances in key options and strategies for converting the building sector to be climate neutral. The evidence from the literature shows it is possible to achieve net or nearly-zero energy building outcomes across the world in most building types and climates with systems, technologies, and skills that already exist, and at costs that are in the range of conventional buildings. Maximizing energy efficiency for all building energy uses is found as central to net zero targets. Jurisdictions all over the world, including Brussels, New York, Vancouver, and Tyrol, have innovated visionary policies to catalyze the success of such buildings, with more than 7 million square meters of nearly-zero energy buildings erected in China alone in the past few years. Since embodied carbon in building materials can consume up to a half of the remaining 1.5°C carbon budget, this article reviews recent advances to minimize embodied energy and store carbon in building materials. ; This work was partially funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades de Es-paña (RTI2018-093849-B-C31 - MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE). The authors at the University ofLleida would like to thank the Catalan Government for the quality accreditation given to theirresearch group GREiA (2017 SGR 1537). GREiA is a certified agent TECNIO in the category oftechnology developers from the Catalan Government. This work is partially supported by ICREAunder the ICREA Academia program.Passive House Canada and specifically Chris Ballard partially supported this work throughvolunteer and staff time. Special thanks to Klemens Schloegl from TU Vienna for his valuabledata and insights on the topic. R.K. is grateful for support from the Oxford Martin School and forthe excellent research assistance from Sharmen Hettipola