The Global Buildings Performance Network (GBPN) launched a new open source interactive tool for identifying the best possible policy scenarios for saving energy in the building sector worldwide. The new Tool for Building Energy Performance Scenarios (BEPS) enables those interested in energy efficiency in buildings to access data and projections and find out where we could be in terms of building energy use by 2050 under three different scenarios (deep, moderate and frozen), depending on the ambitiousness of policy decisions and technology choices.
The recent IPCC Fifth Assessment report highlighted that reducing the energy demand of the building sector is key to addressing climate change. According to the IPCC, the building sector is responsible for nearly 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet offers that greatest cost effective energy and associated GHG emissions savings. With this new tool, the GBPN aims to support ambitious policy action toward the “deep” scenario, which is the only scenario in which energy demand from buildings is reduced over time. This represents the necessary path to take to help the building sector play a leading role in mitigating climate change.
The deep efficiency scenario presented in this tool, shows that by 2050, it is possible for the building sector to consume 30% less thermal energy than it does today, even with the expected growth in population, floor space and comfort. Achieving this requires ambitious policies for net zero energy new buildings and deep energy renovations to become the norm in the coming decade.
This new tool enables users to interactively engage with modelled data for the three possible energy use scenarios for the building sector (deep, moderate and frozen), globally and in 11 regions, between 2005 and 2050. It allows users to:
- Find out whether policy settings in the regions of the world are reducing or increasing climate change impacts;
- Visualise and quantify the potential lock-in of energy demand from buildings over time;
- Identify policy measures that could shift markets to energy savings pathways and quantify the energy savings potentials.
- Conduct your own analysis and generate charts and tables by selecting parameters corresponding to your search needs (final energy use for water heating, space heating & cooling, climate conditions, scenarios, time periods, building vintages and building types).
The tool provides open access to aggregated data analyses on building energy performance. It is possible to download each of the data series. A Quick start guide for developers to access and use the GBPN Linked Open Data (LOD) is also available.
The tool is available here.
Energy in Demand - Sustainable Energy - Rod Janssen 