23,688 research outputs found
Policy Design for Controlling Set-Point Temperature of ACs in Shared Spaces of Buildings
Air conditioning systems are responsible for the major percentage of energy
consumption in buildings. Shared spaces constitute considerable office space
area, in which most office employees perform their meetings and daily tasks,
and therefore the ACs in these areas have significant impact on the energy
usage of the entire office building. The cost of this energy consumption,
however, is not paid by the shared space users, and the AC's temperature
set-point is not determined based on the users' preferences. This latter factor
is compounded by the fact that different people may have different choices of
temperature set-points and sensitivities to change of temperature. Therefore,
it is a challenging task to design an office policy to decide on a particular
set-point based on such a diverse preference set. As a result, users are not
aware of the energy consumption in shared spaces, which may potentially
increase the energy wastage and related cost of office buildings. In this
context, this paper proposes an energy policy for an office shared space by
exploiting an established temperature control mechanism. In particular, we
choose meeting rooms in an office building as the test case and design a policy
according to which each user of the room can give a preference on the
temperature set-point and is paid for felt discomfort if the set-point is not
fixed according to the given preference. On the other hand, users who enjoy the
thermal comfort compensate the other users of the room. Thus, the policy
enables the users to be cognizant and responsible for the payment on the energy
consumption of the office space they are sharing, and at the same time ensures
that the users are satisfied either via thermal comfort or through incentives.
The policy is also shown to be beneficial for building management. Through
experiment based case studies, we show the effectiveness of the proposed
policy.Comment: Journal paper accepted in Energy & Buildings (Elsevier
Performance-Based Specifications: Exploring When They Work and Why
There is extensive research and attention on innovation and sustainable public procurement (SPP) in the European Union at present, with the 2014 revision of the Procurement Directives, the Innovation Union strategy and other European Union policy initiatives. This report seeks to contribute to this discussion through the investigation of the use of performance based specifications (PBSs) in public procurement in the European Union and the United States. The report outlines the benefits and limitations of the use of PBSs, even in the most "progressive" public procurement environments, such as the Netherlands, particularly around their ability to support sustainable development goals and deliver environmental benefits for a procuring authority, such as energy and resource efficiency. Additionally, this report aims to identify the sectors in which the enabling conditions for the successful use of PBSs in public procurement are in place and to understand what policies and regulations are needed to promote the use of PBSs in public tenders and public procurement framework agreements
Preserving multifamily rental housing: noteworthy multifamily assistance programs
This paper describes noteworthy multifamily-assistance programs around the country, including mortgage-insurance, secondary-market, technical-assistance, and tax-abatement programs.
Carbon Free Boston: Social equity report 2019
OVERVIEW:
In January 2019, the Boston Green Ribbon Commission released its Carbon Free Boston: Summary Report, identifying potential
options for the City of Boston to meet its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050. The report found that reaching carbon neutrality by 2050 requires three mutually-reinforcing strategies in key sectors: 1) deepen energy efficiency while reducing energy
demand, 2) electrify activity to the fullest practical extent, and 3) use fuels and electricity that are 100 percent free of greenhouse gases (GHGs). The Summary Report detailed the ways in which these technical strategies will transform Boston’s physical
infrastructure, including its buildings, energy supply, transportation, and waste management systems. The Summary Report also
highlighted that it is how these strategies are designed and implemented that matter most in ensuring an effective and equitable transition to carbon neutrality.
Equity concerns exist for every option the City has to reduce GHG emissions. The services provided by each sector are not
experienced equally across Boston’s communities. Low-income families and families of color are more likely to live in residences that are in poor physical condition, leading to high utility bills, unsafe and unhealthy indoor environments, and high GHG
emissions.1
Those same families face greater exposure to harmful outdoor air pollution compared to others. The access and
reliability of public transportation is disproportionately worse in neighborhoods with large populations of people of color, and
large swaths of vulnerable neighborhoods, from East Boston to Mattapan, do not have ready access to the city’s bike network.
Income inequality is a growing national issue and is particularly acute in Boston, which consistently ranks among the highest US
cities in regards to income disparities. With the release of Imagine Boston 2030, Mayor Walsh committed to make Boston more
equitable, affordable, connected, and resilient. The Summary Report outlined the broad strokes of how action to reach carbon
neutrality intersects with equity. A just transition to carbon neutrality improves environmental quality for all Bostonians, prioritizes socially vulnerable populations, seeks to redress current and past injustice, and creates economic and social opportunities
for all.
This Carbon Free Boston: Social Equity Report provides a deeper equity context for Carbon Free Boston as a whole, and for
each strategy area, by demonstrating how inequitable and unjust the playing field is for socially vulnerable Bostonians and why
equity must be integrated into policy design and implementation. This report summarizes the current landscape of climate
action work for each strategy area and evaluates how it currently impacts inequity. Finally, this report provides guidance to the
City and partners on how to do better; it lays out the attributes of an equitable approach to carbon neutrality, framed around
three guiding principles: 1) plan carefully to avoid unintended consequences, 2) be intentional in design through a clear equity
lens, and 3) practice inclusivity from start to finish
Transforming Energy Networks via Peer to Peer Energy Trading: Potential of Game Theoretic Approaches
Peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading has emerged as a next-generation energy
management mechanism for the smart grid that enables each prosumer of the
network to participate in energy trading with one another and the grid. This
poses a significant challenge in terms of modeling the decision-making process
of each participant with conflicting interest and motivating prosumers to
participate in energy trading and to cooperate, if necessary, for achieving
different energy management goals. Therefore, such decision-making process
needs to be built on solid mathematical and signal processing tools that can
ensure an efficient operation of the smart grid. This paper provides an
overview of the use of game theoretic approaches for P2P energy trading as a
feasible and effective means of energy management. As such, we discuss various
games and auction theoretic approaches by following a systematic classification
to provide information on the importance of game theory for smart energy
research. Then, the paper focuses on the P2P energy trading describing its key
features and giving an introduction to an existing P2P testbed. Further, the
paper zooms into the detail of some specific game and auction theoretic models
that have recently been used in P2P energy trading and discusses some important
finding of these schemes.Comment: 38 pages, single column, double spac
Planning Network UK (PNUK): a manifesto for planning and land reform
The Manifesto is an analysis of the shortcomings of the current planning and land policy system in the UK with a number of policy proposals for refor
The Committee on Climate change: A Policy Analysis
Domestic action on climate change is increasingly important in the light of the difficulties with international agreements and requires a combination of solutions, in terms of institutions and policy instruments. One way of achieving government carbon policy goals may be the creation of an independent body to advise, set or monitor policy. This paper critically assesses the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), which was created in 2008 as an independent body to help move the UK towards a low carbon economy. We look at the motivation for its creation in terms of: information provision, advice, monitoring, or policy delegation. In particular we consider its ability to overcome a time inconsistency problem by comparing and contrasting it with another independent body, the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England. In practice the Committee on Climate Change appears to be the ‘inverse’ of the Monetary Policy Committee, in that it advises on what the policy goal should be rather than being responsible for achieving it. The CCC incorporates both advisory and monitoring functions to inform government and achieve a credible carbon policy over a long time frame. This is a similar framework to that adopted by Stern (2006), but the CCC operates on a continuing basis. We therefore believe the CCC is best viewed as a “Rolling Stern plus” body. There are also concerns as to how binding the budgets actually are and how the budgets interact with other energy policy goals and instruments, such as Renewable Obligation Contracts and the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. The CCC could potentially be reformed to include: an explicit information provision role; consumption-based accounting of emissions and control of a policy instrument such as a balanced-budget carbon tax.Climate change, Carbon policy, Independent body, Time Inconsistency
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