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Reliably reducing the emissions in the building sector plays a crucial role if the 1.5°C climate target from the Paris Agreement is to be met. The observed trends show a significant increase in building energy use, especially in emerging economies. Counteracting these trends is absolutely essential, especially in the light of urbanisation, population growth and changing lifestyles. In terms of mitigating the climate impact of buildings, ensuring high levels of efficiency (i.e. very low energy needs, especially for heating and cooling) has the greatest potential for saving energy and emissions, and is at the same time the prerequisite for effective use of energy from renewable sources. Clearly defined targets and suitable metrics are essential to enable appropriate design decisions. Implemented projects clearly indicate that quality assured design and construction lead to reliable in-use energy performance. Effective policy packages to address opportunities and challenges are important drivers to support the uptake of state-of-the-art efficiency measures in the urban building sector.
The growing demand for timber, in particular for renewable energy, increases pressures on global forests and requires a robust monitoring system to ensure sustainability. This article takes a first step toward more systemic monitoring by asking how the global use of forests by EU consumers can be accounted for. Specifically, this article builds on and develops the method of global land use accounting to account for the EU-27's consumption of primary timber between 2002 and 2011 in terms of both volume and forest area. It assesses international trade flows for around 100 commodities and converts them into a volume of primary raw timber based on conversion values. Results reveal that both imports and exports increased over the assessed time period, with primary EU-27 timber estimated to be around 1 m3/cap in 2011. Gaps, uncertainty and a lack of harmonization regarding especially trade data and conversion values are key challenges to further improving the robustness of the method and reliability of results. Future research may focus on improving the method to address in particular recycled and recovered flows as well as the question of whether area or volume is the most appropriate metric for further development of a forest footprint indicator.
This paper reports on a nationwide field survey of managing energy efficiency of buildings under energy performance contracting (EPC) in Chinese building sector. The survey aims at getting insight of Chinese experiences of EPC and survey yielded information on profile, specificity and risk specifications of EPC in Chinese building sector. The key findings are that the existing EPC projects are mainly driven by policies and majority of first parties in EPC are owners of public buildings. The contract specificity is worryingly low, with underspecification prominent in the contract sections of renewal and change of the planned solutions, dispute resolution and compensation for personal and property damage. Insufficient risk specification was a major cause of contract failure and disputing. High risks are observed in not enough feasibility study, delay in completion, operational risks, delay in payment and uninsured loss. Most post EPC projects would be worryingly unsuccessful, given to the facts that many of them have not established their energy team, have no further investment and have no effective maintenance. The Chinese existing emission trading scheme (ETS) offers a vital opportunity for upscaling EPC in building sector and policy framing is needed for linking EPC projects and ETS.
Energy system optimization models (ESOMs) such as MARKAL/TIMES are used to support energy policy analysis worldwide. ESOMs cover the full life-cycle of fuels from extraction to end-use, including the associated direct emissions. Nevertheless, the life-cycle emissions of energy equipment and infrastructure are not modelled explicitly. This prevents analysis of questions relating to the relative importance of emissions associated with the build-up of infrastructure and other equipment required for decarbonization.
Considering the role of transport for a 1.5 Degree stabilization pathway and the importance of light-duty vehicle fuel efficiency within that, it is important to understand the key elements of a policy package to shape the energy efficiency of the vehicle fleet. This paper presents an analysis focusing on three types of policy measures: (1) CO2 emission standards for new vehicles, (2) vehicle taxation directly and indirectly based on CO2 emission levels, and (3) fuel taxation. The paper compares the policies in the G20 economies and estimates the financial impact of those policies using the example of a Ford Focus vehicle model. This analysis is a contribution to the assessment of the role of the transport sector in global decarbonisation efforts. The findings of this paper show that only an integrated approach of regulatory and fiscal policy measures can yield substantial efficiency gains in the vehicle fleet and can curb vehicle kilometres travelled by individual motorised transport. Using the illustrative example of one vehicle model, the case study analysis shows that isolated measures, e.g. fuel efficiency regulation without corresponding fuel and vehicle taxes only have minor CO2 emission reduction effects and that policy measures need to be combined in order to achieve substantial emission reduction gains over time. The analysis shows that the highest level of impact is achieved by a combination regulatory and fiscal policies rather than only one policy even if this policy is more aggressive. When estimating the quantitative effect of fuel efficiency standards, vehicle and fuel tax, the analysis shows that substantial gains with regard to CO2 emission are only achieved at a financial impact level above 500 Euros over a four year period.
Previous studies showed that using carbon dioxide (CO2) as a raw material for chemical syntheses may provide an opportunity for achieving greenhouse gas (GHG) savings and a low-carbon economy. Nevertheless, it is not clear whether carbon capture and utilization benefits the environment in terms of resource efficiency. We analyzed the production of methane, methanol, and synthesis gas as basic chemicals and derived polyoxymethylene, polyethylene, and polypropylene as polymers by calculating the output-oriented indicator global warming impact (GWI) and the resource-based indicators raw material input (RMI) and total material requirement (TMR) on a cradle-to-gate basis. As carbon source, we analyzed the capturing of CO2 from air, raw biogas, cement plants, lignite-fired power, and municipal waste incineration plants. Wind power serves as an energy source for hydrogen production. Our data were derived from both industrial processes and process simulations. The results demonstrate that the analyzed CO2-based process chains reduce the amount of GHG emissions in comparison to the conventional ones. At the same time, the CO2-based process chains require an increased amount of (abiotic) resources. This trade-off between decreased GHG emissions and increased resource use is assessed. The decision about whether or not to recycle CO2 into hydrocarbons depends largely on the source and amount of energy used to produce hydrogen.