Broad View

Broad View

• Energy Efficiency's Role in Reducing Global Warming

  March 2007, Energy_Efficiency_and_Climate_Change-Jeff_Schlegel_03292007.pdf. Though focused on impacts within Arizona and the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project (SWEEP) territory, the view of national congressional proposals addressing greenhouse gas reduction and the examples of comparative data display makes it more broadly useful.

• Existing Homes Target Market Assessment

  2004. Robert Hendron, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy - Weatherization and Intergovernmental Program.
  This 21-pg NREL report is “…intended to provide an introduction to the existing homes market, and summarize some of the key points that should be considered in the planning of an effective program addressing energy efficiency in existing homes…”
  

• Global view of Residential Demand and Potential to Reduce Demand

  You must register and create a profile with McKinsey.com to access this report. There is interesting stuff on house size and the impact of more air conditioning worldwide. For example: “Residential is not only the single largest single end use energy sector, accounting for a quarter of the world’s global demand, it is also where the largest energy productivity opportunities are waiting to be seized.” page 57. Interestingly, they do not identify increasing the efficiency of existing building enclosures as a strategy, but rather focus on new buildings, lighting, appliances, and the efficiency of heating and cooling equipment.

• Lighting One Corner of the World: Pointing the Way with Energy Efficiency

  This is Danny Parker’s keynote address to the 2006 ACI Home Performance Conference, in which he emphasizes the importance of personal action, skepticism, creativity, diagnostics, hard work, feedback, enjoyment, and above all – data – in tackling the building-based causes of global climate change.

• The Challenge of Existing Homes: Retrofitting for Dramatic Energy Savings

  This links to the Building Green website, and from there to this 10 page feature article in their newsletter (Vol16. No 7). Published the same month as the ACI Summit, it describes the challenges of energy-retrofitting existing homes, case studies, and a “Low-Energy Retrofits-Priority Checklist” differentiated by application to heating or cooling climates.

• The Energy Impact of Our Buildings

  This12-pg online article in the New Solutions Community Newsletter (No 11) by Pat Murphy gives an excellent, data-rich, and well-documented overview of the case for deep home energy retrofits.

• US Residential energy expenditure.xls

  Wealth of data