Matthew Cox

Energy benchmarking of commercial buildings: a low-cost pathway toward urban sustainability

US cities are beginning to experiment with a regulatory approach to address information failures in the real estate market by mandating the energy benchmarking of commercial buildings. Understanding how a commercial building uses energy has many benefits; for example, it helps building owners and tenants identify poor-performing buildings and subsystems and it enables high-performing buildings to achieve greater occupancy rates, rents, and property values. This paper estimates the possible impacts of a national energy benchmarking mandate through analysis chiefly utilizing the Georgia Tech version of the National Energy Modeling System (GT-NEMS). Correcting input discount rates results in a 4.0% reduction in projected energy consumption for seven major classes of equipment relative to the reference case forecast in 2020, rising to 8.7% in 2035. Thus, the official US energy forecasts appear to overestimate future energy consumption by underestimating investments in energy-efficient equipment. Further discount rate reductions spurred by benchmarking policies yield another 1.3‐1.4% in energy savings in 2020, increasing to 2.2‐2.4% in 2035. Benchmarking would increase the purchase of energy-efficient equipment, reducing energy bills, CO2 emissions, and conventional air pollution. Achieving comparable CO2 savings would require more than tripling existing US solar capacity. Our analysis suggests that nearly 90% of the energy saved by a national benchmarking policy would benefit metropolitan areas, and the policy’s benefits would outweigh its costs, both to the private sector and society broadly.

Reinventing Industrial Energy Use in a Resource-Constrained World

Publisher Summary This chapter describes the progress made to date and the magnitude of the remaining opportunities, stemming both from broader use of current best practices and from a range of possible advances enabled by emerging technologies and innovations. It begins by focusing on the potential for improving energy efficiency in several major energy-consuming industries. After describing the principal barriers to deployment of energy-efficient technologies particularly in the U.S., it explores policy innovations that have successfully transformed industrial practices in five countries: the Netherlands, Denmark, India, Japan, and China. The goal is to identify lessons that can shift industry toward greater efficiency across the globe, thereby becoming part of the climate solution. The chapter also explains the dual goals of advancing energy efficiency at industrial plants and advancing product innovation for broader use are both critical to promoting the more productive consumption of energy in a resource-constrained world.

The water efficiency gap

Water managers throughout the world are increasingly challenged to provide reliable and affordable water supplies to growing human populations, under conditions of climate variability and competing demands. At the same time, there is growing recognition of the interconnections between water and energy use (the water-energy nexus), and calls for integrating water and energy policy. If any regulatory integration is to occur, it is important to understand the dynamics of water management and how it compares to the management of the energy system. Furthermore, lessons learned from the energy sector may transfer to the water sector. The concept of the energy efficiency gap has been used to understand the market and non-market barriers that create and sustain an inefficient energy system. We explore to what degree the understandings of the energy efficiency gap can be applied to water management to produce efficiency gains. Water systems typically fall far short of operating at economically and technically achievable levels of efficiency. We find that in many sectors of the economy, these failures are determined more by political institutions than by markets. To illustrate, even in times of scarcity, water management agencies typically do not raise prices. In contrast, most American energy resources are privately owned, and the market provides greater incentive for owners to consider scarcity in their decisions (Olmstead 2010). We argue that while there are substantial differences in the markets for energy and for water, there are many barriers to achieving efficiency that are common to water and energy. Parallel opportunities for reducing the water efficiency gap include improved data reporting, improved metering, revised rate structures, improved information and management strategies, residential rebate programs, public–private partnerships for irrigation efficiency, benchmarks for thermoelectric cooling, and product efficiency standards.

Climate research priorities for policy-makers, practitioners, and scientists in Georgia, USA

Climate change has far-reaching effects on human and ecological systems, requiring collaboration across sectors and disciplines to determine effective responses. To inform regional responses to climate change, decision-makers need credible and relevant information representing a wide swath of knowledge and perspectives. The southeastern U. S. State of Georgia is a valuable focal area for study because it contains multiple ecological zones that vary greatly in land use and economic activities, and it is vulnerable to diverse climate change impacts. We identified 40 important research questions that, if answered, could lay the groundwork for effective, science-based climate action in Georgia. Top research priorities were identified through a broad solicitation of candidate research questions (180 were received). A group of experts across sectors and disciplines gathered for a workshop to categorize, prioritize, and filter the candidate questions, identify missing topics, and rewrite questions. Participants then collectively chose the 40 most important questions. This cross-sectoral effort ensured the inclusion of a diversity of topics and questions (e.g., coastal hazards, agricultural production, ecosystem functioning, urban infrastructure, and human health) likely to be important to Georgia policy-makers, practitioners, and scientists. Several cross-cutting themes emerged, including the need for long-term data collection and consideration of at-risk Georgia citizens and communities. Workshop participants defined effective responses as those that take economic cost, environmental impacts, and social justice into consideration. Our research highlights the importance of collaborators across disciplines and sectors, and discussing challenges and opportunities that will require transdisciplinary solutions.