Buildings behaving badly:A behavioral experiment on how different motivational frames influence residential energy label adoption in the Netherlands

Heating buildings contributes to approximately 36% of Europe’s energy demand and several EU member states have adopted mandatory energy labels to improve energy efficiency by promoting home weatherization investments. This paper focuses on the perception of the energy label for residential buildings in the Netherlands and the role of different frames (egoistic, biospheric and social norms and neutral frames) in motivating adoption of energy labels for housing. We used a behavioral email experiment and an online survey to investigate these motivational factors. We find that biospheric frames are weaker than the other three motivational frames in terms of engaging interest in the energy label, but that the biospheric frame results in higher willingness to pay (WTP) for the energy label. We also find that age (rather than income) correlates with higher willingness to pay for home energy labels

Turning off the gas tap: Sustainable Energy Policies, Practices and Prospects in the Netherlands

This chapter describes efforts to transition to more sustainable ways of living in the Netherlands. Backhaus captures the status quo of Dutch sustainable energy policies and projects in clarity and brevity, suggesting that prospects to live up to the commitment made in the Paris Agreement are dim. The Perspective project, a major, yet not well-known Dutch research programme in the 1990s discussed as best-practice example, suggests that substantial change is possible. Like most past and current sustainability efforts, the Perspective project focused on individual behaviour change. It qualifies as best-practice example by demonstrating that living well, healthy and sustainably can go hand-in-hand. Marking the Dutch cycling culture as an example, Backhaus proposes that, rather than targeting individuals, future sustainable energy policies and programmes should best address infrastructures, social norms and collectives

Large-scale synchrony of gap dynamics and the distribution of understory tree species in maple-beech forests

Large-scale synchronous variations in community dynamics are well documented for a vast array of organisms, but are considerably less understood for forest trees. Because of temporal variations in canopy gap dynamics, forest communities—even old-growth ones—are never at equilibrium at the stand scale. This paucity of equilibrium may also be true at the regional scale. Our objectives were to determine (1) if nonequilibrium dynamics caused by temporal variations in the formation of canopy gaps are regionally synchronized, and (2) if spatiotemporal variations in canopy gap formation aVect the relative abundance of tree species in the understory. We examined these questions by analyzing variations in the suppression and release history of Acer saccharum Marsh. and Fagus grandifolia Ehrh. from 481 growth series of understory saplings taken from 34 mature stands. We observed that (1) the proportion of stems in release as a function of time exhibited a U-shaped pattern over the last 35 years, with the lowest levels occurring during 1975–1985, and that (2) the response to this in terms of species composition was that A. saccharum became more abundant at sites that had the highest proportion of stems in release during 1975–1985. We concluded that the understory dynamics, typically thought of as a stand-scale process, may be regionally synchronized

Tensor networks for lattice gauge theories beyond one dimension

Tensor network methods are numerical tools and algorithms to study many-body quantum systems in and out of equilibrium, based on tailored variational wave functions. They have found significant applications in simulating lattice gauge theories that approach relevant problems in high-energy physics. Compared to Monte Carlo methods, they do not suffer from the sign problem, allowing them to explore challenging regimes such as finite chemical potentials and real-time dynamics. Further development is required to tackle fundamental challenges, such as accessing continuum limits or computations of large-scale quantum chromodynamics. This work reviews the state-of-the-art tensor network methods and discusses a possible roadmap for algorithmic development and strategies to enhance their capabilities and extend their applicability to open high-energy problems. We provide tailored estimates of the theoretical and computational resource scaling for attacking large-scale lattice gauge theories

Gunning-Narasimhan's theorem with a growth condition

Given a compact Riemann surface X and a point x_0 in X, we construct a holomorphic function without critical points on the punctured Riemann surface R = X - x_0 which is of finite order at the point x_0. This complements the result of Gunning and Narasimhan from 1967 who constructed a noncritical holomorphic function on every open Riemann surface, but without imposing any growth condition. On the other hand, if the genus of X is at least one, then we show that every algebraic function on R admits a critical point. Our proof also shows that every cohomology class in H^1(X;C) is represented as a de Rham class by a nowhere vanishing holomorphic one-form of finite order on the punctured surface X-x_0.Comment: J. Geom. Anal., in pres

Light and tree size influence belowground development in yellow birch and sugar maple

The effects of light and tree size on the root architecture and mycorrhiza of yellow birch (Betula alleghaniensis Britton) and sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marsh) growing in the understory of deciduous forests in southern Qu

Estimating a threshold price for CO2 emissions of buildings to improve their energy performance level. Case study of a new Spanish home

Energy consumption in homes produces CO2. In many countries, building regulations are being set to enable energy efficiency performance levels to be issued. In Spain, there is a regulated procedure to certify the energy performance of buildings according to their CO2 emissions. Consequently, some software tools have been design to simulate buildings and to obtain their energy consumption and CO2 emissions. In this paper the investment, maintenance and energy consumption costs are calculated for different energy performance levels and for various climatic zones, in a single-family home. According to the results, more energy efficient buildings imply higher construction and maintenance costs, which are not compensated by lower energy costs. Therefore, under current conditions, economic criteria do not support the improvement of the energy efficiency of a dwelling. 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Impact of Firm Heterogeneity on Direct and Spillover Effects of FDI: Micro Evidence from Ten Transition Countries

This paper presents a comparative study of the importance of direct technology transfer and spillovers through FDI on a set of ten transition countries, using a common methodology and appropriate methods to account for selection and simultaneity correction. This paper considers by far the largest firm level dataset (more than 90,000 firms) used by any study on the spillover effects of FDI. The main novelty of the paper is the explicit control for various sources of firm heterogeneity when accounting for different effects of FDI on firm perfirmance. Controlling for these variables leads to some interesting results which contrast with the previous empirical work in the field. We find that horizontal spillovers have become increasingly important over the last decade, and they may even become more important than vertical spillovers. Furthfirmore, this work shows that the heterogeneity of firms in tfirms of absorptive capacity, size, productivity and technology levels affect the results. These findings suggest that both direct effects from foreign ownership as well as the spillovers from foreign firms substantially depend on the absorptive capacity and productivity level of individual firms. Only more productive firms and firms with higher absorptive capacities are able to both compete with foreign affiliates in the same sector and benefit from the increased upstream demand for intfirmediates generated by foreign affiliates. In addition, these results show that foreign presence may also affect smaller firms to a larger extent than larger firms, but this impact may be in either direction

Predicting energy consumption and savings in the housing stock: A performance gap analysis in the Netherlands

Residential buildings are one of the key target sectors for energy and CO2 reduction. Research on the relationship between policy instruments and their effects is crucial for the continuous improvement of these tools. This thesis focuses on The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) as an EU flagship policy for technical improvements of the existing dwelling stock. At the core of the directive, an energy certificate is prescribed for all existing dwellings and is required to be present at moments of sale or rent. The certificate includes a theoretical consumption of each individual dwelling. However, theoretical models do not always correspond to reality with the desired accuracy. This large scale study explores the relation between the consumption assumed by the label certificate and the real consumption of the dwellings. It demonstrates that low performing dwellings have a theoretical consumption roughly two times the actual, while well performing dwellings consume one third less. These discrepancies are shown to have adverse effects on policy targets. Therefore, the thesis quantifies the causes of the discrepancies, looking into dwelling and household, as well as behavioural factors. There is a clear need for a more precise estimation of heating consumption on a broader, dwelling stock level in order to enhance the effectiveness of the current renovation policies. The thesis showed that using the current knowledge along with the growing amount of available data, there is enough motivation to reduce the performance gap by improving the predictions of actual dwelling consumption.OTB Research for the Built EnvironmentArchitecture and The Built Environmen