Martin Jakob

Towards a 2000 Watt society – assessing building-specific saving potentials of the Swiss residential building stock

Switzerland declared the notion of the 2000 Watt society as their leitmotif towards a sustainable development in terms of energy. This implies that worldwide, no more than 17520 kWh of total primary energy and 1 ton CO2-eq. are to be consumed per capita and year for all services. Thus, in order to meet the targets of the 2000-Watt society, it is necessary to reduce primary energy demand by 44% and greenhouse gas emissions by 77%. The building stock model, described in this paper, assisted the government of Zurich to identify the necessary steps in order to achieve the goals with regard to the city‟s residential, school, and office buildings. The objective of this paper is to investigate the role of energy demand reduction in residential buildings on the way towards the goals of a 2000-Watt society. In order to illustrate the mechanisms within the building stock and to identify the effects of construction activity, the model works with different scenarios. Specific measures were isolated and analysed individually. All three measures act directly on the building stock; each have comparable reduction potential in terms of primary energy demand (ca. 15%) and greenhouse gas emissions (ca. 40%). In order to further cut back greenhouse gas emissions, measures to reduce carbon intensity of fuels and electricity need to be considered.

Modeling the impact of energy efficiency in the electricity consumption of the Brazilian tertiary sector

Studies of the impact of energy efficiency on the electricity consumption of the Brazilian tertiary sector are still few. Recent official studies extrapolate energy conservation figures to provide estimations. In this work, a techno-economic bottom-up model is applied to simulate long-term electricity consumption of the Brazilian tertiary sector under four energy efficiency scenarios. The approach considers drivers of the tertiary consumption and diffusion of energy services in the modeling. The concept of energy efficiency measures (EEMs) is used to model individual options that improve energy services. The model is validated considering observed tertiary consumption by region. Considering the proposed EEMs, the results show that lighting plays an important role on energy saving when EEMs diffuse autonomously. Considering cost-effectiveness, ventilation & air-conditioning contributes most to energy savings. This work shows that, despite data unavailability, it is possible to build a consistent model for Brazilian tertiary sector by adjusting model parameters.