Our homes and buildings should protect us. We should expect it,” said Senate Majority Leader Kate Lieber, a Democrat from Beaverton, Oregon. The structures where we live, work, and seek shelter are using 74 percent of the nation's electricity. They account for 39 percent of our total energy use and 35 percent of our carbon emissions. Boston may adopt new energy-efficient building codes to reach their zero emissions goals. “It will increase energy efficiency, reduce emissions and advance our overall carbon neutrality goals,” Wu said. Energy efficient building codes and technology can reduce emissions considerably. “Eighty-five percent of the square footage that we have today is still going to be around in 2050," Oliver Sellers-Garcia, Boston’s Green New Deal director said.
The IEA reported, energy-efficient and low/zero-carbon heating and cooling technologies for buildings have the potential to reduce CO2 emissions by up to 2 gigatonnes (Gt) and save 710 million tonnes oil equivalent (Mtoe) of energy by 2050. This is crucial because it is estimated that heating and cooling account for half of global energy consumption in buildings.
“Heating and cooling will all be fully electric powered and new ventilation will be added to provide fresh air to every unit," Wu said about Boston. "Taken together, these changes will cut the building's energy consumption by nearly half.”
Technologies that provide energy conservation are already being utilized. NREL’s campus employs energy efficient methods like passive heating and cooling and plug load management. Despite emerging energy efficient technologies, anomalies exist. Researchers found that building occupants cause results to vary. SyracuseCoE Associate Director and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professor Bing Dong and several students have compiled research from 15 countries on how building occupants behave or how they interact with energy efficient building systems. Testing occupant behavior continues around the world and in Syracuse. Understanding how people interact with systems helps set the standards for buildings.
Energy efficient buildings could reduce emissions, but we’ll have to consider and convince the human element. “And as the climate crisis gets worse, we in Oregon need to do all that we can to make sure our buildings are the first line of protection for people,” said Senate Majority Leader Kate Lieber, a Democrat from Beaverton,Oregon.