An Empirical Evidence On The Effectiveness And Potential Energy Savings Of Residential Building Energy Efficiency Standards

Building energy consumption is closely related to people’s lives.With the improvement of living standards,residents’ pursuit of life comfort will lead to accelerated demand of energy consumption in residential buildings.Therefore,improving the energy efficiency of residential buildings is very important for the realization of energy conservation and emission reduction targets for any government.Residential building energy efficiency standards(BEES)has become the preferred building efficiency policy tool for governments.With the increase of energy-saving and emission-reduction tasks,the residential BEES need to be continuously updated to guide the continuous improvement of the energy efficiency level of residential buildings.Developed countries such as the United States have established medium-and long-term roadmaps for BEES upgrading to guide the improvement of building energy efficiency.However,there is no clear BEES update roadmaps in China so far,and the revision time of residential BEES in various provinces and cities is not uniform.The provinces and cities have not revised residential BEES even for 10 years.This decade is the peak of China’s urbanization construction.The lagging BEES can’t adapt to the market demand.From the perspective of the global action to accelerate the energy efficiency of buildings,this is not conducive to the realization of China’s building energy-saving and consumption-reduction goals.The root cause is that China lacks a scientific,in-depth and quantitative assessment of the effectiveness of BEES,and fails to effectively summarize the lessons learned from BEES setting and operation to promote the continuous updating of residential BEES.In the context of rapid urbanization,in order to reduce the risk of carbon lock-in caused by low-energy efficiency residential buildings,China must improve the effectiveness of the formulation and implementation of residential BEES,and enhance policy vitality and benefits.So how to improve the effectiveness of residential BEES setting and implementation through the assessment of energy savings of residential BEES has become a realistic problem to be solved.This has a strong theoretical guiding significance and practical reference value for improving performance of China’s continuous updating and implementation of residential BEES.This study conforms to the research trend of building energy conservation policy proposed by the International Energy Agency,and shifts the research on building energy conservation policy from the theoretical research of the laboratory to the empirical research,from qualitative research to quantitative research,and uses the actual energy data of buildings to evaluate the effectiveness of BEES.The effect is to continuously improve and update the policy system for BEES to achieve the ultimate carbon reduction target.In view of this background and research purpose,the major research work is as follows:(1)To gain theoretical support and research space.This study comprehensively combing the connotation of the effect evaluation of building energy conservation policies and the relevant research on the evaluation of the effectiveness of BEES.Compared with welfare policy and education policy evaluation,the quantitative evaluation of the effect evaluation of building energy-saving policy is relatively slow.Therefore,the paper first defines the connotation of the effectiveness of BEES.Secondly,the author reviews the existing research on the evaluation of BEES and the prediction of energy-saving potential,and the basic data of actual energy use of residential buildings,and summarizes the shortcomings and weak links in current research.Finally,the theories related to the evaluation of the effect of building energy conservation policies are reviewed,including building energy epidemiology,PDCA cycle theory,statistical theory,and public policy cycle theory,which lays a theoretical foundation for subsequent research.(2)Based on content analysis,summed up the problems in the evaluation of the effectiveness of residential BEES in China.systematically combing the evolution process of China’s residential BEES,policy content and objectives,implementation mechanism and current implementation status,analyzing the problems existing in the current standard effect evaluation system,and providing realistic information for the later evaluation of policy effects in accordance with.(3)Set up real building-related data variable system on household survey and located the actual energy benchmarking.Based on the theoretical analysis of BEES,this chapter constructs the building actual energy data variable system for evaluating the effect of BEES.Referring to the US Residential Energy Consumption(RECS)survey,the government,colleges,and energy companies cooperated with each other to obtain first-hand data on the actual use of residential buildings.Then using statistical methods to quantitatively describe the residential building characteristics,energy behavior characteristics,family characteristics,electrical characteristics,energy conservation awareness and energy consumption level of urban residential buildings,and accurately locate the actual energy benchmarking;Using the gap analysis method to evaluate the quantitative difference between the theoretical calculation and the actual values,and obtain more realistic simulation parameters related to actual building energy consumption.(4)To estimate the impact of BEES on residential electricity usage based on actual electricity consumption in Chongqing.This study uses the “counterfactual” theory to construct an energy-saving effect evaluation model for BEES based on building energy epidemiology methodology.Then using survey data collected from 1,128 households in Chongqing,this study applied the propensity scores matching method to estimate the effect of two levels BEES: the 50%-BEES(low level)and the 65%-BEES(high level).(5)To assessment of future potential energy-savings from revised BEES which is based on the evaluation facts.This study conducts a quantitative study of future policy simulations based on post-occupancy evaluation data for BEES,and provides an analysis based on energy use facts for policy recommendations that support top design.From a macro perspective,a macroscopic energy-saving forecasting model that considers the characteristics of actual energy use behavior and the actual energy-saving effect from the bottom up is constructed.Based on the factual data of energy use,the theoretical assumptions of BEES have been revised.At the same time,based on the principle of induced change of policy diffusion,from the macroscopic point of view,it is estimated that the direction and degree of energy conservation change due to the prebound effect,and the performance of BEES is verified by the realized rate of BEES.(6)Proposal for optimizing the implementation system of residential BEES.Based on the understanding of the logical relationship between ex-post and ex-ante evaluation of BEES,combined with the best policy practice globally,it proposes relevant policy measures for improving and optimizing the energy-saving system of BEES in China from the perspective of implementation mechanism innovation.