Implications of energy efficiency improvements on embodied impacts of the United States building stock

Motivation A building stock most probably keep and lock in its energy performance behavior for decades. The existing building stock in the U.S. accounts for 40% of energy consumption, while building energy demand grew by 51%... [ view full abstract ]

Motivation A building stock most probably keep and lock in its energy performance behavior for decades. The existing building stock in the U.S. accounts for 40% of energy consumption, while building energy demand grew by 51% between 1980-2011. Although this increase is primarily due to population growth, the energy efficiency of building systems has helped to mitigate the increase. Depending on the choice of the energy efficiency measures, the greenhouse gas emissions impact of some materials associated with these technologies may be significant. In addition, the green building demand continues to rise and there is the potential for the balance of embodied versus operational energy impacts to shift further as the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) continues to set stringent standards for new designs, and requirements for advanced energy efficiency measures continue to emerge in response within local building codes. Therefore, it is important to look at the operational as well as the embodied energy impacts of buildings from a building stock perspective.

Objective This paper aims to utilize the existing big data analytics and to describe the application of predictive as well as prescriptive analytics to develop a high-spatial resolution model of the future building stock within the US.

Method The developed model utilizes the existing life cycle impact databases to estimate the future embodied as well as operational energy use of the buildings by zip code in the U.S. In order to accomplish this goal, the residential energy conservation survey (RECS) micro data, the Census general housing characteristics data, the EIA’s National Energy Modeling System (NEMS), and forecasts published by other organizations are used to develop the building stock model. Information from the Athena Impact Estimator is used to estimate the embodied impacts of the building types.

Results Preliminary results of the analysis indicate that for non-structural elements, the outside wall systems, particularly masonry and wood will continue to represent major contributors to the embodied impacts of the residential building stock. As such, the energy efficiency measures that are related to insulative properties of wall systems will have significant impact of the embodied impacts of buildings. Future analysis will get into the meaningful part of trade-off between embodied and operational energy impacts of building stock and how can U.S. avoid the negative impacts of possible lock-in effects. The outcome of this research is critical for policy makers to understand the future energy intensities of building stock in the U.S.

Key words: Buildings, Energy Consumption, Embodied Energy, Forecasting