Specific energy consumption (SEC) also called energy intensity is one of the important aspects for lumber sawing sawmills since it represents the energy efficiency of the sawmill. Production, process, and energy data were gathered by visiting five sawmills out of which three sawmills had single sawing lines and two sawmills had double sawing lines. Sawmills with single and double sawing lines were

The rapid increase in cooling demand for air-conditioning worldwide brings the need for more efficient cooling solutions based on renewable energy. Seawater air-conditioning (SWAC) can provide base-load cooling services in coastal areas utilizing deep cold seawater. This technology is suggested for inter-tropical regions where demand for cooling is high throughout the year, and it has been implemented

Based on the perspective of market segmentation, this paper empirically tests the impact mechanism of market segmentation on energy efficiency by using China’s provincial panel data from 2005 to 2016. The results show that market segmentation has a significant inhibitory effect on energy efficiency by distorting technological progress, scale efficiency, and allocation efficiency. The conclusion of

The previous literature has studied barriers to energy efficiency in firms. While there are several studies with some focus on the manufacturing sector in Europe, the corresponding literature in Asia is still nascent. Using a unique dataset that contains a large number of firms belonging to the service and manufacturing sectors in Japan, this study contributes to filling this gap in the literature

The residential building stock holds a large energy efficiency improvement potential related to energy upgrading of the building envelope. Details about the heterogeneity of the building stock are paramount to perform a proper assessment of attractive energy efficiency improvements for end-users. Based on a sample of buildings, the study develops methods to identify potentials for heterogeneous building-tailored

In contrast to conventional routing systems, which determine the shortest distance or the fastest path to a destination, this work designs a route planning specifically for electric vehicles by finding an energy-optimal solution while simultaneously considering stress on the battery. After finding a physical model of the energy consumption of the electric vehicle including heating, air conditioning

The impact of sealing ventilation shafts, installing self-balancing dampers and larger capacity exhaust fans on indoor air quality has not yet been thoroughly investigated. We examined IAQ outcomes in two groups of high-rise multifamily public housing. Both study and control group dwellings received ventilation shaft cleaning. The study group also received higher horsepower rooftop fans and ventilation

The heating requirements for district heating systems decrease sharply during the summer in China, which leads to the heating capacity of these systems remaining idle. To make full use of district heating systems, a novel approach for application of these thermal systems to cooling is proposed in this paper. The proposed system is based on a distributed absorption cooling (DAC) system driven by heat

Auctioning revenues in the European Union Emissions Trading System are likely to increase in the future. This projection is driven by recent changes within the system’s framework, which address the current surplus of emission allowances and reduce the overall cap. Considering a growing amount of auctioning revenues, it becomes even more important to assess the use of these revenues and their potential

Surely, electricity market participants need an accurate estimate for the price and load signals to properly manage their programs to increase their profits. Regarding the two-way interaction between suppliers and consumers, they are able to manage their required profile. Therefore, the individual price or load forecasting is not acceptable and cannot capture their related pattern. Therefore, this

The retrofit of buildings to improve energy efficiency represents a vast opportunity in the construction market with the potential to reduce energy demand, create jobs, and achieve environmental benefits. Multiple challenges need to be overcome to unleash this potential and realize the benefits of investments in building energy retrofit projects. Small-/medium-sized commercial buildings are typically

It is extremely significant to construct a scientific and accurate forecasting model for energy consumption of the USA, because it could help to formulate energy policies and allocate energy resources. In recent years, more and more hybrid models based on divided-and-conquer method have been applied in energy consumption prediction to obtain satisfactory results. However, owning to the obvious enhancing

Energy efficiency assessment and resource allocation optimization are conducive to improve the production and reduce carbon emissions in complex chemical processes. And the traditional energy efficiency assessment method based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) does not distinguish the effective decision-making units (DMUs) better. Therefore, this paper proposed a novel DEA method combining the cosine

The energy sector is one of the most prominent sectors in the development of nations. The scarcity of energy in developing nations urged the government and private sector to consider the efficient resources of energy. Energy-efficient appliances help to reduce the consumption of energy and fulfill consumers’ utilitarian needs. The purpose of this study is to empirically evaluate consumers’ purchase

Energy consumption monitoring technology plays a very important role in the realization of intelligent building energy saving, but it is not accepted widely in China. The main reasons for this are the low public energy-saving awareness and incomplete informational policy instruments; thus, studying how informational policy instruments affect the adoption of energy consumption monitoring technology

High energy consumption in building material production has a significant effect on global warming and other environmental pollution, which has brought into prominence building materials whose production consumes less energy and uses renewable energy sources. In particular, the production phase of brick, a commonly used material in building construction, has an important effect on energy consumption

Primary aluminium production is energy- and GHG-intensive in which electrolysis is by far the most energy- and GHG-intensive process. This paper’s aim is to study the effects on (1) primary energy use, (2) GHG emissions and (3) energy and CO2 costs when energy end-use efficiency measures are implemented in the electrolysis. Significant savings in final and primary energy use, GHG emissions and energy

Recent studies investigating convergence in energy consumption at the sectoral level within a country suggest that aggregate energy consumption could mask considerable differential impacts that might be observed at the sectoral level. This study aims to contribute and complement the existing convergence literature with an attempt to analyze sectoral convergence in energy consumption from the developing

This study aims to investigate the extended role of goal-framing theory (GFT) on the energy-saving air conditioners called inverter air conditioners (IACs) in the context of the developing market (Pakistan). The GFT has three constructs, gain motivations, hedonic motivations, and normative motivations, which affect consumers’ sustainable behavior. The study is based on a survey of IAC users with the

The paper presents the public building typology, energy demand estimations and retrofit scenarios, as well as associated costs and benefits for energy-saving measures in the public building stock of Albania. First, representative building types were identified to estimate their energy performance, and define retrofit packages. Second, this information was used to analyse the costs and benefits of the

The present paper analyses the factors associated with intensity in resource efficiency practices of European SMEs, considering four categories of firms according to their level of investment (very low, low, medium and high). Based on the stakeholder theory, we estimate a generalised ordinal logistic model which allows us to analyse the relationship between internal and external pressures, resources

The increase in the demand for electricity in the last decades has forced consumers to adopt strong rationing measures. However, these actions, often evidenced in small intuitive ways of reducing consumption, are not enough to improve energy efficiency. The user’s awareness needs to be accompanied by increasingly interactive and autonomous tools that allow them to know the true dimension of the financial

Anomaly detection in power consumption data can be very useful to building managers. It allows them to detect unexpected power consumption values, identify unusual behaviors, and foresee uncommon events. This paper proposes a novel unsupervised approach to detect anomalies in power consumption data. We combine the clustering-based methods with the prediction-based ones to learn typical behavior scenarios

The building sector is a large energy consumer and is responsible for high CO2 emissions; hence, improving the energy performance of buildings is vital. Building renovations open opportunities to improve their energy performance. Building professionals and other actors in the early phase of renovations decide what energy efficiency and saving measures will be implemented. Their role is studied here

Industrial sector in each country consumes large amounts of total produced electrical energy. Hence, industrial customers with flexible loads are attractive targets for implementing demand-side management (DSM) programs. In recent years, Iranian energy ministry has applied an industrial operational reserve program (IORP) to reduce energy shortage during peak hours. This program has been developed to

We propose a method for detecting and forecasting events of high energy demand, which are managed at the national level in demand side response programmes, such as the UK Triads. The methodology consists of two stages: load forecasting with long short-term memory neural network and dynamic filtering of the potential highest electricity demand peaks by using the exponential moving average. The methodology

The urban climate and outdoor air quality of cities that have a positive thermal balance depending on the thermal consumptions of buildings cause an increase of the urban heat island and global warming effects. The aim of this work has been to develop an energy balance using the energy consumption data of the district heating network. The here presented engineering energy model is at a neighborhood

Airflow management plays an important role in ensuring secured and energy-efficient operation of data centres (DCs). Higher power density in DC is a risk resulting in serious deterioration of airflow distribution accompanied by the increasing cooling energy demand. In this study, the airflow optimization effects of rack baffles and server lower-side terminal baffles on the thermal environment are first

The global demand of steel production is growing, and so are the carbon dioxide emissions from the sector. Research has confirmed that 15 to 20% further energy efficiency improvement is possible, which would reduce the sector’s greenhouse gas emissions and help meet global emission reduction initiatives. In this context, this research aims at developing a bottom-up system-based model to evaluate the

In recent years, the issue of aviation carbon emissions has caused wide public concern. How to measure airline performance under the premise of considering aviation carbon emissions has become a hot issue. In this paper, airline energy efficiency is divided into three stages as follows: operations, services, and sales. A network range-adjusted measure with unified natural and managerial disposability

This paper presents an energy efficiency assessment of 46 African countries and analyzes possible bidirectional relationship between energy efficiency and economic development within a three-stage framework. In the first stage, energy efficiency is measured within a total factor framework using the slack-based measure with undesirable output and sub-regional comparisons are done. The second stage assesses

A short period of exterior door opening in residential houses is usually not considered an important energy loss during the heating season. However, in the case of a passive house, this infiltration could be an important item within the heating energy calculation procedure. In this paper, the influence of exterior door opening on heating consumption in residential houses with high energy efficiency

This paper projects European households’ stock of dishwashers and explores possible measures to accelerate adoption of more energy-efficient products. Europe is experiencing an increase in the sales of household dishwashers and this trend is expected to become more relevant in the coming years. The consequent rise in energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be reduced if consumers

This paper aims to determine the relationships, if any, between the green ratings, deemed as eco-efficiency by employing a structural equations model (SEM) to determine the relationship between the Newsweek Green Rankings and the Global Fortune 500 Corporations. The methodology includes the analysis of four sustainability variables and four social responsibility variables evaluated in the Newsweek

This paper reports on a study of electricity consumption, for achieving thermal comfort, and possible relation to respective plan layouts, in apartments of tropical Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, which is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. As approximately 45% of the total population of Dhaka constitutes the middle income and upper-middle income groups, electricity consumption

To support the grid and integrate renewables, demand response schemes reward the power flexibility of energy consumers. Data centers can profit from this by using power management techniques on all levels of data center architecture: infrastructure, hardware, workload, applications. Even though lately, demand response with data centers has been well researched, most works focus on just one or two techniques

In this paper, we forecast residential electricity consumption in Brazil considering the variability in consumption behavior in different regions. In order to do so, we use a bottom-up approach to estimate long-term electricity consumption that considers three technology-driven scenarios: one assuming reference efficiency development, another one based on the Brazilian government’s predictions, and

The Headquarters Department of the Army sponsored a study to determine the national impact of deploying the Re-tuning™ (“Re-tuning” is a trademark of the US Department of Energy) methodology in five building types that account for over 40% of the Army’s conditioned building stock. Re-tuning is a systematic process that improves operational efficiency and reduces energy consumption at no or low cost

A key element of evaluation, measurement, and verification (EM&V) studies for energy efficiency programs involves estimation of net energy savings that account for free ridership, spillover, and induced market effects. The existing literature recognizes these effects to be significant and provides detailed guidelines to estimate them. However, there appears to be a disconnect between these guidelines

One of the key challenges to greater renewable electricity supplies is the temporal mismatch between non-dispatchable renewable sources and peaks in electricity demand. In addition, increased electrification coupled with the de-carbonisation of electricity generation is likely to increase the scale of demand peaks. This could force investment in carbon-intensive peaker generation or capital intensive

This paper is an attempt to identify a methodology for converting conventional energy consumption buildings to net-zero energy buildings (NZEB). The first step was rather different from the usual energy audit, which is to analyze a facility’s energy consumptions from both macro- and micro-scales. To implement such an approach, a governmental office building (Metro) in Portland, OR, was chosen as a

Improved building energy efficiency has been shown to contribute substantially to global greenhouse gas abatement objectives. Realisation of these benefits depends on the deployment of appropriate policy instruments. Building energy codes have the potential to deliver economic, environmental, societal and other strategic benefits. Australia’s high per capita greenhouse emissions and rates of building

The building sector contributes significantly to global energy consumption and CO2 emissions. It is urgent to reduce them through the retrofit of the current building stock and improvements in new building designs. The energy performance contracts that can deliver energy consumption savings must have an attractive rate of return to make financial sense for public and private sector buildings. These

The present study presents the bin weather data for four cities in the tropical region and its significance in the building energy analysis. The bin weather data for four cities in Malaysia, which are Bayan Lepas, Kuala Terengganu, Senai and Kuching, were generated. The bin weather data are in the range from 18 to 38 °C with 2 °C intervals and tabulated based on six 4-h shifts. Since there is a lack

Indoor swimming pools are high energy demand facilities. Current knowledge about their energy demand does not offer reliable information for a correct design of their thermal installations. A deeper knowledge about actual energy needs of these installations is then necessary to improve their energy efficiency. The objective of this work is to define and validate a new and specific model for the characterisation

Energy and environmental standards, like ISO 50001 and ISO 14001, have a significant influence on the sustainable performance of companies worldwide, while international sustainable building rating systems are often the chosen method to quantify and benchmark performance. This research aims to comprehensively evaluate and assess the performance of these standards in relation to both the LEED and BREEAM

At present, the contradiction between economic development and resource and environmental sustainability has become increasingly acute in China. Improving the quality of the ecological environment has become an important strategic goal for China’s national economic and social development. In this paper, we used the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 1986 to 2016 to measure the eco-efficiency

Space heating is the largest contributor to domestic energy consumption in the UK (UK). Gas central heating systems usually extend into every room of a property, but often sit in the background of the lives of those using them. Installation could offer a critical moment to optimise the operating efficiency of these systems, or consider alternative low carbon technologies. However, whether installation

Consumer adoption of fuel-efficient vehicles is a crucial step in improving energy efficiency of the light-duty vehicle sector. To promote adoption, policymakers have employed various demand- and supply-side policies including incentives, fuel economy standards, zero emission vehicle mandate, among others. This paper measures the changes in consumers’ purchase motivations and latent demand for hybrid

Energy performance of earthen wall office buildings in equatorial and tropical climates is investigated using a Simulink model and EnergyPlus software. The main aim of this numerical simulation study is to quantify the magnitude of the effect of adding a fibrous material or a stabiliser in the compressed earth block on the energy requirement or thermal comfort of a building taking into account different

The Passive House (PH) standard is a voluntary quality assurance standard focused upon maximising the health and wellbeing of occupants, whilst reducing space heating demand to a very low level. To meet the PH standard, well-defined criteria have to be met. However, given literature that suggests a ‘performance gap’ for energy savings, the question remains, how well do PH dwellings perform in situ

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) collectively account for >13% of total global energy demand but have not receive sufficient scholarly attention because of the lack of an integrated framework to investigate the decision-making process of energy-efficiency measures (EEMs) and its crucial influencing drivers. To improve the energy-saving capabilities of SMEs, we developed a framework to integrate

Energy saving and emission reduction sometimes mean high cost, so companies do not have enough motivation to always support the related policy. By neglecting the economic cost and the imperfect substitution among input factors, widely used energy efficiency indicators such as “energy intensity” will sometimes lead to uneconomic results. Based on the theory of economic efficiency, “energy economic efficiency”

In the passive house system in cold regions today, the strategies focus on reducing energy loss by enhancing the thermal insulation performance of the building’s envelope. Yet, under the specific background, the application of passive house evaluation system lacks emphasis on the significance of solar heat gain. In this paper, two independent passive houses in cold areas in China were selected as research

The objective of this study is to estimate environmental energy efficiency (EEE)—defined as energy efficiency measures incorporating undesirable output in the production process—for high-income, middle-income and low-income economies as well as at the global level for the period 1993–2013. Under the broad framework of Data Envelopment Analysis, the traditional input-oriented measures of efficiency

The original version of this paper was unfortunately published with an error in Fig. 3. The published figure includes excess layers, which negatively affects the readability of the figure. The correct figure is displayed below. The authors apologize for this error.

In this study, modifying a constant speed–driven hydraulic press brake machine into a variable speed drive system is examined in terms of electricity saving, CO2 reduction, and economic perspectives. The goal of the modification is to obtain increased efficiency by adding minimum hardware and software tools. For realizing this goal, a hydraulic test rig operated in a manner to represent the cycle of

Advances in automated energy metering system over the years have engendered transparency, self-control, efficiency, and equity in energy use especially among residential households globally. Despite this development, only few studies have shown the disaggregated effects of household attributes, dwelling characteristics, and metering systems on residential energy efficiency in the Global South. This

Worldwide, household electronic appliances represent a very dynamic market segment, accounting for a significant share of household energy demand. In Switzerland, household electronic appliances consumed 5.3 PJ (1.5 TWh) or 8.2% of the residential sector’s electricity demand. According to historical trends, improved energy efficiency has been counteracting increased size, enhanced functionality and

Although many studies have examined various types of single load demand prediction algorithms, it is yet a challenging decision to select the best predictor. Geographical characteristics are one of the most effective factors in load consumption patterns, the performance of the algorithms, and the accuracy of predictions. Therefore, developing a general framework in which meteorological characteristics