Download or read book Energy Conservation Decision Making in the Commercial Sector written by Roberta Tannenbaum and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Decision Making for Energy Conservation in Existing Commercial Buildings written by Richard Philip Chertow and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Energy Conservation written by and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work is based on previous research reported in Construction of Energy Conservation Scenarios: Interim Report of Work in Progress, LBL 7834, June 1978. Several guidelines were selected for subsequent work. In addition, five subjects were chosen to be investigated--recycling, industrial decision making, recreational travel, residential and commercial buildings, and end-use energy conservation data base. This report concerns industrial decision making. The industrial sector consumes about forty percent of the energy used both in California and in the nation. Opportunities for conserving substantial amounts of energy exist in industry, and decisions are made each year regarding investment in conservation. Government policy (1) could be formulated to encourage conservation investments, but government intervention should be limited to those situations where it is both necessary and likely to be effective. To assist policy makers in understanding the industrial decision making process and recognizing the factors which prevent a measure's being adopted, a methodology is developed that can be applied to most conservation measures in all industrial subsectors. The methodology is summarized in two flow charts and a matrix that are described in Sections I and II respectively.

Download or read book Real Prospects for Energy Efficiency in the United States written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2010-06-10 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's economy and lifestyles have been shaped by the low prices and availability of energy. In the last decade, however, the prices of oil, natural gas, and coal have increased dramatically, leaving consumers and the industrial and service sectors looking for ways to reduce energy use. To achieve greater energy efficiency, we need technology, more informed consumers and producers, and investments in more energy-efficient industrial processes, businesses, residences, and transportation. As part of the America's Energy Future project, Real Prospects for Energy Efficiency in the United States examines the potential for reducing energy demand through improving efficiency by using existing technologies, technologies developed but not yet utilized widely, and prospective technologies. The book evaluates technologies based on their estimated times to initial commercial deployment, and provides an analysis of costs, barriers, and research needs. This quantitative characterization of technologies will guide policy makers toward planning the future of energy use in America. This book will also have much to offer to industry leaders, investors, environmentalists, and others looking for a practical diagnosis of energy efficiency possibilities.

Download or read book Energy Consumption Behavior in the Commercial Sector written by Christopher Todd Payne and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The commercial and industrial sectors of the United States compose roughly one-third of total United States energy consumption. Many studies have suggested that significant cost-effective energy savings opportunities exist in this sector, but there is a gap between predictions of potential and actual investment in energy-efficient technologies. Very few studies have been conducted to examine the decision-making environment of the business sector. In particular, there is essentially no information about how small-business decision-makers make choices about energy consumption. My research is intended to begin the process of understanding this important arena of energy consumption behavior. Using semi-structured interview techniques, I interviewed forty-four businesses in ten states. The focus of the interviews was the business decision-maker's handling and use of the utility bill---the main (often sole) piece of information that links energy consumption to cost. Through the interviews, I collected information about how utility bills are understood and misunderstood, what components of the bill are seen as useful or confusing, and how energy consumption was seen in the context of larger business decision-making. In addition, I collected data on two forms of energy consumption feedback: historic consumption feedback, in which informants compared their current energy use to patterns of their own energy consumption over time; and group comparison consumption feedback, in which informants compared their energy consumption to the consumption of a group of similar energy consumers. Finally, I collected data on sources of information to which decision-makers turned when they wanted to seek more information about energy consumption alternatives. Overall, my findings suggest that the current utility bill format is often misunderstood. In many cases, particularly in the small-business and medium-size-business categories, the link between energy consumption and energy cost is broken. The result is a sense of disempowerment for many consumers. Rather than seeing their energy consumption as something under their control, they instead view the energy bill as an unavoidable component of operating a business, comparing it to other required expenses like rent or taxes. Reaction to changes in the utility bill to provide consumption feedback were mixed. Improvements to self-comparison information provided on the bill were generally viewed positively. On the other hand, energy consumption comparisons with similar groups of customers were viewed with a great deal of skepticism. The idea of group comparison was generally discarded as impractical or invalid. This research improves academic understanding of the energy consumption decision-making environment in the business sector. By developing a better understanding of the context in which these energy consumption decisions are made, the research suggests opportunities for improvements to the mechanisms by which business decision-makers gain information about energy consumption alternatives and energy efficiency opportunities. Improvements to the information provided on the utility bill could enhance the linkage between energy consumption and energy cost for commercial-sector decision-makers, particularly in the small business sector. This could, in turn, lead to greater attention to economic opportunities for energy consumption reduction. Ultimately, improved utility bill information could result in energy and cost savings to business consumers.

Download or read book Effective Tracking of Building Energy Use written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2012-03-30 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States is responsible for nearly one-fifth of the world's energy consumption. Population growth, and the associated growth in housing, commercial floor space, transportation, goods, and services is expected to cause a 0.7 percent annual increase in energy demand for the foreseeable future. The energy used by the commercial and residential sectors represents approximately 40 percent of the nation's total energy consumption, and the share of these two sectors is expected to increase in the future. The Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS) and Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) are two major surveys conducted by the Energy Information Administration. The surveys are the most relevant sources of data available to researchers and policy makers on energy consumption in the commercial and residential sectors. Many of the design decisions and operational procedures for the CBECS and RECS were developed in the 1970s and 1980s, and resource limitations during much of the time since then have prevented EIA from making significant changes to the data collections. Effective Tracking of Building Energy Use makes recommendations for redesigning the surveys based on a review of evolving data user needs and an assessment of new developments in relevant survey methods.

Download or read book Energy conservation written by and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Exploring Decision making Factors for Energy Efficiency Retrofit in Building Portfolio written by Lysandra Amanta Medal Bitticaca and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Building Energy Efficiency Retrofit (BEER) is essential for energy conservation and emission reduction. Despite advancing knowledge of the benefits and available solutions, the current BEER projects are considerably limited. One difficulty in promoting BEER is the complexity of the decision-making process. Decisions are made at different stages to evaluate hundreds of energy efficiency measures involving multiple stakeholders with conflicting interests, especially those who manage building portfolios. This dissertation aims to evaluate factors to help industry professionals and policymakers establish a comprehensive decision-making approach when considering BEER projects in commercial and institutional buildings. This dissertation first ranked stakeholders’ priorities toward a set of factors across the United States using Analytic Hierarchy Process. The study also introduced some critical dimensions of context in energy efficiency, including physical (e.g., geographical region), functional (e.g., industry sector), and social contexts (e.g., leadership position). The results showed no significant disagreement between public and private institutions or between executives and non-executives but more considerable differences among climate zones and industry sectors. Second, this research explored the decision-making processes of BEER projects at the University of Washington. Using semi-structured interviews, document review, and the Causal Loop Diagram approach, the study identified the cause-and-effect relationships among factors. The research suggests that initiating corrective actions to increase organizational commitment, government support, use of technology, and funding will drive more BEER investment in higher education institutions. Finally, this dissertation brings together empirical studies worldwide that examined the factors influencing energy efficiency improvements. A total of 30 factors emerged from a systematic literature review of 42 peer-reviewed articles, categorized into economic feasibility, team process, technical practicality, institutional characteristic, governmental policy, occupant impact, and environmental impact. The study discussed how geographical regions, building types, and country's economic classifications impact the building stakeholders' perceptions about energy efficiency. The findings from this dissertation highlight that the promotion of energy efficiency in buildings will necessarily imply a further effort to contextualize the research and point out the so-called non-energy benefits from the implementation of BEER.

Download or read book Energy Management written by Stephanie Whitney and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Buildings account for approximately 40% of global energy use and emit 33% of global GHG emissions. Buildings also offer the greatest potential for GHG emission reductions, as energy consumption within existing stock can be reduced by 30-80% using proven and commercially available technologies. Despite this promise, there is a pervasive 'performance gap' between optimal and actual energy use within buildings, even in retrofitted or new high-performance buildings. This gap is attributed to the decision-making of individuals and organizations that occupy buildings and use energy services, resulting in both market and non-market failures. As such, energy efficiency is widely recognized as critical behavioural component that needs to be addressed in climate change mitigation strategy and policy, aimed at reducing the performance gap. Globally, energy efficiency finance is one of six workstreams under the G20 Energy Efficiency Action Plan, and is seen as an essential component in achieving the United Nations' 7th Sustainable Development Goal (SGD) to “ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all”. Currently, there is an estimated $430 billion USD shortfall in energy efficiency investments to meet this goal; global government and utility spending on energy efficiency was estimated to be US$25.6 billion in 2017, and is expected to grow to US$56.1 billion in 2026. While the enormous and increasing amounts of taxpayer dollars being spent on energy efficiency around the world are promising, the varying degrees of performance outcomes resulting from these efforts are cause for concern. Examinations of national energy efficiency policies have shown only modest impact on national GHG emissions reductions and that defining energy as a demand-side resource limits the extent to which energy efficiency can be achieved. In addition, spending public funds to reduce negative externalities instead of correcting the internalization of external costs creates asymmetric incentives, leading to heterogeneous results. Drawing from the pro-environmental behaviour change literature, this dissertation positions stakeholder engagement an integral part of the success of energy efficiency programs, and thus focuses on the energy management decisions of various stakeholders at multiple scales within an energy systems context. Specifically, the relationship between voluntary programs and decisions about electricity consumption - i.e., do the former actually cause the latter to change - is expanded upon in three distinct (but interrelated) papers. The overall goal of this research was to investigate the success factors and barriers to the achievement of GHG emissions reductions in Ontario and to identify potential opportunities to achieve greater energy efficiency and conservation outcomes. Chapter Two of this dissertation presents a scoping review of the pro-environmental behaviour change literature, with a focus on the important/influential communities of scholarship that shape the structure of the field, and the extent to which emerging research fronts reflect the structural themes. The results revealed that the Journal of Social Issues (JSI) 2000 Vol. 56 Issue 3 was a compilation of important/influential papers, measured by co-citation analysis, bibliometric coupling analysis, and four types of centrality. A dense, six-cluster network was revealed, with two papers from this special issue by Stern and Dunlap & Van Liere forming the lobes of the structure. The four themes identified by the editors of the JSI 2000 special issue - synthesis, motives/values, power, and applicability - were found to generally map onto the structural network. This scoping review also revealed that the emerging research fronts reflect a stronger focus on the applicability of environmental behaviour change theories on salient issues such as consumerism, household (Abrahamse & Steg, 2011) and workplace energy consumption, transportation choice, and tourism. Chapter Three of this dissertation addresses the identified gap related to consequences of intervention design and implementation through a quantitative analysis of data collected by the Ontario Energy Board (OEB). A multi-level growth curve model was used to explain the achievement and rate of change towards the provincial Peak Demand and Cumulative Energy Savings targets by Ontario's local distribution companies (LDCs) from 2011-2014, the first Conservation First Framework period. While there was insufficient variance in the data to allow for analysis of the Peak Demand target, the model revealed statistically significant variability in the achievement of the Net Cumulative Energy Savings target, as well as the rate of change towards the target amongst the LDCs. The results showed that in the Ontario context, customer density was statistically significant in predicting the achievement of an LDC's Net Cumulative Energy Savings target. More importantly, the statistically significant variance of the rate of change over time demonstrates that LDCs moved towards their respective targets at different rates. This variance was largely left unexplained by the multi-level model developed in this case study, therefore opportunities remain to improve the model and offer further insight into Ontario's energy conservation landscape at this level of the energy system. Chapter Four of this dissertation focused on the end use of energy, applying systems theory to explore opportunities to reduce the performance gap in commercial office buildings. This study used interview data from Ontario and Alberta, two provinces with different electricity grid compositions, electricity prices, and levels of energy consumption. A conceptual overview of the relationships between system components was developed, and five modes of behaviour were identified as pathways for increasing the investment in building retrofits and stakeholder engagement in energy behaviour programs. In this case study, evidence of collaboration between stakeholders to discuss shared benefits and outcomes created win-win scenarios, and mitigated some of the split-incentive challenges that have been documented in the literature. Findings from this dissertation contribute to the pro-environmental behaviour change literature by offering quantitative and qualitative evidence that deepen existing knowledge on the design and implementation of interventions to improve energy efficiency outcomes. Collectively, the three distinct papers presented in this dissertation established a need to examine the performance gap through a systems framework in order to ascertain the extent to which impacts at the infrastructure, institutional, and individual levels of the energy system are being addressed, and to leverage opportunities to catalyze motivations and reduce barriers for all system stakeholders, simultaneously. This framework is critical because individuals and organizations do not make decisions about energy efficiency and conservation in isolation; rather they are part of complex and nested social networks, where behaviour is influenced by the interactions and relationships between system components. Several key conclusions emerged from the synthesis of three papers. Considering electric distribution utilities as the unit of analysis, financial and operational metrics were insufficient at explaining the variability in CDM target achievement and the rate of change towards targets over time, pointing to a need to establish other differences between utilities that may have more predictive power. In the commercial real estate sector, corporate leadership and organizational culture were found to be determinants of retrofit investment behavior, prompting the question of whether such characteristics may also influence CDM target achievement in utilities.

Download or read book Energy Efficiency Decision making in the Corporate Sector written by Canada. Environment Canada. Energy Efficiency Working Group. Energy Sector Sustainability Table and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Energy Abstracts for Policy Analysis written by and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Energy Research Abstracts written by and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 1010 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Roles Within written by Andrew Peterman and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humans are consuming more energy from fossil fuels today than ever before. Energy conservation, particularly in the commercial building sector, offers an immense energy resource for the U.S. economy. Researchers have long tussled with the challenge that, despite the wide range of technically, financially, and often politically viable energy efficiency strategies in the United States, conservation still remains a largely underutilized energy resource. This dissertation employs both quantitative and qualitative methods to address this long-standing challenge to policymakers, businesses, organizational theorists, and citizens. The research embodied in this dissertation begins with an analysis of voluntary programs for energy conservation. The research is then narrowed to understand the ways in which a variety of roles develop within voluntary energy alliance networks and the relationships between organizational roles and the diffusion of knowledge as one means to promote energy savings in commercial buildings. In chapter 1, I introduce an observed problem from practice and outline the framework for this dissertation. In chapter 2, I draw upon the existing literature on barriers to the adoption of energy conservation measures in commercial building development. Using interview, survey, and archival data, I distill a complex system of energy efficiency programs into a single framework. I classify the strategic drivers leading to the emergence of each program form and assess the shortcomings of each voluntary program form when considered singularly. Finally, in this chapter I find that to achieve greater adoption of energy conservation in commercial building development, a comprehensive portfolio of voluntary and mandated programs must be applied. Next, chapters 3 and 4 present the results of research that employed analytic induction coupled with social network analysis to analyze the United States Department of Energy Commercial Building Energy Alliances (CBEAs)--a cross-sectoral alliance network committed to greater adoption of energy conservation in the commercial building sector. In chapter 3, I explore voluntary energy alliances as a governance form for addressing energy conservation in commercial buildings. I unpack structural and interactionist role theories to present a new framework that explains the emergence of interorganizational roles in a network setting. I identify four forms of knowledge created iv and shared in the CBEAs. My findings show that each interorganizational role had implications on the diffusion and access to each form of knowledge shared in the network. Finally, my findings here show that a (mis)alignment of role aspiration, focal perception of role, or attribution by other organizations could be related to a number of role processes: consensus, conflict, dissonance, and ambiguity, each with implications for alliance success and stability. In chapter 4, I identify the relationships between governance strategy, governmental organization roles, and the diffusion of data, information, and knowledge within the CBEAs. I empirically assess the roles government entities may take in balancing the creation and diffusion of both public and private goods inside and outside of the alliance network context. I show that the network governance form is an opportunity for government entities to engage with the private sector in a more collaborative and balanced approach for promoting both public and private goods than either market-oriented or hierarchical strategies alone allow. The research reported in this dissertation thereby contributes to a better practical and theoretical understanding of government-led alliance networks, energy conservation, policy, and management in the built environment.

Download or read book Energy Abstracts for Policy Analysis written by and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Agent Based Models of Energy Investment Decisions written by Tobias Wittmann and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-03-15 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As societies face the challenge of securing an efficient and environmentally sound energy supply, researchers have strived to determine the future development of energy consumption, infrastructure and technology endowment. This book proposes a new agent-based approach to studying the development of urban energy systems. Decisions of private and commercial investors and operators are modeled using a bounded rational decision model which are parameterized by socio-economic data.

Download or read book Incentives for Energy Conservation in the Commercial and Industrial Sectors written by Kenneth E. Train and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Energy Policy Planning written by B. A. Bayraktar and published by Springer. This book was released on 1981 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Advanced Research Institute (ARI) on "The Application of Systems Science to Energy Policy Planning" was held under the auspices of the NATO Special Programme Panel on Systems Science in collaboration with the National Center for Analysis of Energy Sys tems, Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA, as a part of the NATO Science Committee's continuous effort to promote the advancement of science through international cooperation. Advanced Research Institutes are sponsored by the NATO Science Committee for the purposes of bringing together senior scientists to seek consensus on an assessment of the present state of knowl edge on a specific topic and to make recommendations for future research directions. Meetings are structured to encourage inten sive group discussion. Invitees are carefully selected so that the group as a whole will contain the experience and expertise neces sary to make the conclusions valid and significant. A final report is published presenting the various viewpoints and conclusions. The NATO Systems Science Panel noted that the systems approach is increasingly being applied to energy policy analysis and plan ning in both public and private sectors of national economies. Consequently, it seemed appropriate at this time to bring together experts to review and evaluate recent experience, in order to iden tify strengths and weaknesses in current prac tice, and to make recommendations for research directions.