This week’s briefs

There are many good brief notes on sustainable energy this week.

• eceee industrial summer study

EiD attended the industrial summer study that was held in Arnhem, the Netherlands. It was an excellent event, covering the full gamut of topics related to industrial energy efficiency. There were over 80 papers presented and many excellent plenary speakers and discussions. What I found most pleasing was the number of young researchers – many doing their PhDs – working in this field. Bringing more intellectual rigour to the field will have long-lasting benefits. And speaking about benefits, many related to the topic of non-energy benefits. The presentations of most of the plenary speakers are available here.

After industrial energy efficiency being in the wilderness in a policy sense at the European level for so many years, it is good that in the last few years it has gained the priority it needs. This “new” community needs to expand to include a wider range of voices, but I’m sure it will.

• IEA building webinar series

The series is designed to seek advice from key global building stakeholders in the development of the IEA’s new initiative for Sustainable Buildings. The third in the series, to be held June 10^th, concerns building activities/partnership. A key focus of the partnership is to raise the importance of building energy efficiency among high level energy policy directors while providing the fundamental analysis to support more investment from both the public and private sectors. For more information, go to the IEA’s website.

• GBPN webinar

The Global Buildings Performance Network (GBPN) is hosting a series of webinars on “how to” implement a successful policy package that targets energy renovations for residential buildings based on the findings. The second in its series, on June 12^th, will discuss the importance of energy saving targets and how they drive energy renovations. It will include Yamina Saheb from the EC Joint Research Centre, discussing the importance of targets. There will also be case studies from Denmark, Germany and California. More information is available here.

• IEA launch of new report on network standby coming soon

A new report, More data, less energy: Making network standby more efficient in billions of connected devices, will be launched by a webinar on July 2^nd at 13:30 Paris time.

The electricity demand of our increasingly digital economies is growing at an alarming rate. While data centre energy demand has received much attention, of greater cause for concern is the growing energy demand of billions of networked devices such as smart phones, tablets and set-top boxes. In 2013, a relatively small portion of the world’s population relied on more than 14 billion of these devices to stay connected. That number could skyrocket to 500 billion by 2050, driving dramatic increases in both energy demand and wasted energy.

Being connected 24/7 means these information and communication technology (ICT) devices draw energy all the time, even when in standby mode. This publication probes their hidden energy costs. In 2013, such devices consumed 616 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity, surpassing the total electricity consumption of Canada. Studies show that for some devices, such as game consoles, up to 80% of the energy consumption is used just to maintain a network connection. Implementing best available technologies could reduce the energy demand of network-enabled devices by up to 65%. In the absence of strong market drivers to optimise the energy performance of these devices, policy intervention is needed.

Building on its experience in setting international policy for standby energy consumption of stand-alone devices, the International Energy Agency uses this publication to set the stage for tackling the much bigger challenge of network standby. In exploring both policy and technology solutions, the book charts a path forward and identifies which stakeholders should take the lead in particular areas. An underlying message is that there is a need for international cooperation across all parts of the ICT value chain.

The keynote speaker will be Maria van der Hoeven, Executive Director of the IEA

Participants must register in advance to attend the webinar by emailing ieapressoffice@iea.org

• EiD and Twitter

Last week over 1716 viewed EiD tweets. If you aren’t following, you should. Go to @EnergyDemand. And why not also go to our Facebook page [https://www.facebook.com/EnergyInDemand]