China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Anticipating energy communities in urban projects
Published in Gilles Debizet, Marta Pappalardo, Frédéric Wurtz, Local Energy Communities, 2023
Inès Ramirez-Cobo, Gilles Debizet, Silvère Tribout
In 2009, the canton of Freiburg launched an energy strategy for the year 2100 with the aim of reducing its dependence on foreign energy supplies and gradually abandoning fossil fuels. Called the “2,000-watt society”,2 this approach aims to reduce the consumption of energy per capita, among other things, through the increasing use of renewable energy and the exploitation of local resources. This policy emphasises the organisation of the built environment as a key element in achieving the energy objectives.3 Launched in 2011, the BlueFactory project (Figure A4.1) is part of this energy policy.
A transition to sustainable lifestyles
Published in Ulisses Manuel de Miranda Azeiteiro, J. Paulo Davim, Higher Education and Sustainability, 2019
Bojan Baletić, Rene Lisac, Morana Pap
Twenty years ago, the experts from ETH Zurich (UNU, 2009) proposed a strategy for a “2,000-watt society”. By this, they tried to address the continuing growth in energy consumption that was due to rising income, consumerism and changes in lifestyle which brought increase in the number of dwellings and energy-consuming appliances. Analysing the average European use of 6,000 W at the time (compared to 12,000 W in the United States, 1,500 W in China, 300 W in Bangladesh), they set the target of 2,000 W per person if we are to achieve a balanced development by the year 2050, without compromising living standards and mobility. The experts were confident that the technological solutions required for changes in the energy demanding building and road transport sector were already present. What was needed was a significant change in human behaviour and a political will. To achieve the goals of the “2,000-watt society”, a fundamental change in social norms, values and practices was required, together with an innovation system (research policy, education, standards, incentives etc.) as a part of a national policy on sustainable development. This approach offered a metric based on energy use. At the time, this proposal was considered as a utopian vision although all the predictions about available resources continued to require important changes in our living habits. Since then, the society has adopted the new regulation on building energy use, and the rising interest for electric vehicles is reaffirming a need for a fresh vision of the sustainable society. We strive to design new buildings in accordance with the “nearly zero energy building” (nZEB) standard, though, to precisely define, it is still a complex question. On the energy efficiency side, new houses will be expected soon, to produce and store energy, i.e. to become micro power plants functioning as parts of a smart grid. Arup Forsight (2013) study suggests an even bolder vision for the future, buildings as living organisms.
Rethinking the concept of building energy rating system in Australia: a pathway to life-cycle net-zero energy building design
Published in Architectural Science Review, 2022
Hossein Omrany, Veronica Soebarto, Amirhosein Ghaffarianhoseini
To date, only a limited number of countries have commenced incorporating embodied impacts into their building regulations. The Netherlands is the first country to introduce requirements for the measurement of embodied impacts, though not the reduction, into its building regulations (Building Decree 2012). According to section 5.2 of building decree 2012 (Building Decree 2012), the Dutch jurisdiction requires that the environmental impacts (i.e. GHG emissions and resource depletion) associated with the structural elements of a residential function or an office building with a total usable area exceeding 100 m2 must be quantified. The enforcement of such a regulatory approach aims to stimulate the builders to utilize sustainable construction materials. However, no restriction has been applied by the Dutch building codes to the amounts of embodied energy associated with the used construction materials. Other countries have also taken their initial steps towards this end such as France (French Ministry of Environment Energy and the Sea 2020), Finland (Kuittinen and le Roux 2018), Norway (Norwegian Standard NS 3720: 2018), Denmark (Frivillig Baeredygtighetsklasse 2018; The Danish Government Strategy for the Circular Economy 2018), and Sweden (Boverket Klimatdeklaration Av Byggnader 2018). Switzerland also opts to implement the target of the ‘2000-Watt Society’, based on which primary energy use per person including embodied energy would be 2000 watts while limiting CO2 emissions to no more than 1.0 ton of CO2 equivalent per person per year by 2050 (Frischknecht et al. 2019).
Making sense of LCA results when evaluating multiple building designs – comparison of interpretation concepts
Published in Building Research & Information, 2023
David Božiček, Youssef Almezeraani, Mitja Košir
The top-down GWP approach is based on target GWP values provided by Hollberg et al. (2019). The target values are defined according to SIA 2040 (SIA 2040, 2017), the Swiss roadmap to a 2000-watt society, and adapted to meet the global target of 1 t CO2-e per capita per year. The respective benchmarks for embodied, operational and total GWP impacts per building occupant are 270, 90 and 360 kgCO2 eq. per capita per year.