Good news for emissions from buildings, says IEA

Building emissions could fall by a quarter by 2050, if energy efficient heat and cooling systems are promoted, says the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The new roadmap, the latest in a series of technology roadmaps, found that there was potential to reduce CO₂ emissions by up to 2 gigatonnes (Gt) and save 710 million tonnes of oil equivalent of energy from buildings by 2050.

They say that with many of the technologies currently available, and as heating and cooling equipment is replaced every 7 to 10 years – much more frequent than the buildings themselves – the energy savings could happen fairly rapidly.

Bo Diczfalusy, IEA’s Director of Sustainable Energy Policy and Technology said: “Energy efficiency and CO₂-free technologies for heating and cooling in buildings offer many low-cost options for reducing energy consumption, consumers’ energy bills and CO₂ emissions in buildings, with technologies which are available today.

“Given that space heating and cooling and hot water production consumer perhaps half of all energy consumed in buildings today, the savings potential is very large.”

Currently space heating and cooling, along with heating water, accounts for around half of all global energy consumption, and by 2050, the IEA predicts that the housing sector will have increased by 67 per cent, while the area of the service sector – both through commercial and institutional buildings – will rise by almost 195 per cent.

In the report, ‘Energy-efficient Buildings: Heating and Cooling Equipment,’ Nobuo Tanaka, IEA Executive Director said that these technologies “represent significant opportunities to reduce energy consumption, improve energy security and reduce CO₂ emissions.”

Focused on four main technologies; active solar-thermal, combined heat and power, heat pumps and thermal-energy storage, the roadmap sets out the current status, visions for and actions to achieve energy efficient heating. It charts the course for expanding technologies to 2050.

The report said that $3.5 billion a year would be needed in investment for research and development by 2030. Initially policy makers should focus on reducing costs, improving efficiency and integration of components, and then after 2030 focus on making new technologies better than the best-possible.

It also said that governments would need to develop national roadmaps, tailored to their local circumstances to drive the vision of the global roadmap, collect timely data on energy consumption and improve education of professional including architects, designers, engineers and builders.

Policy will also be needed to set minimum energy performance standards, labelling and financial incentives. Low or zero-carbon technologies, mandatory quality assurance and certifications schemes should be put in place for equipment and installers, according to the report.

Financial incentives will be key, says the IEA, to overcoming the widespread market barriers which prevent the deployment of equipment which emits low or zero CO₂.

Diczfalusy said: “Governments need to create the economic conditions that will enable heating and cooling technologies to meet environmental criteria at least cost. The challenge is significant, given the very fragmented nature of the building sector and the difficulty of ensuring the effective policy reaches all decision makers.”

The IEA hope that by 2050, policies could cut fossil fuels’ share in space and water heating to between 5 and 20 per cent, depending on the region, while global efficiency of cooling systems could more than double.

The roadmap was prepared in consultation with representatives of government, industry, academia and NGOs.

 

Image: Elliot Brown | flickr