To accomplish net-zero carbon emissions in the built environment by 2050, we must equitably decarbonize commercial buildings, including reducing plug and process loads (PPLs). PPLs are plug-in or hardwired electric and gas loads that are not associated with major building end uses like lighting and HVAC. Research shows PPL energy reduction strategies and control technologies have the potential to save energy. But even when implemented, these savings have rarely been achieved and there has not been widespread uptake in U.S. commercial buildings. We investigate why these technologies and strategies have not seen widespread adoption and identify behavior and technology pathways to increase PPL reduction in U.S. commercial buildings. We examined behaviors of commercial building stakeholders through 44 interviews and cross-referenced qualitative analysis findings with in-depth technical knowledge of existing PPL control technologies and reduction strategies. PPL control implementation must be paired with management strategies, such as occupant engagement and training, to achieve optimal savings, and best practices should be disseminated across the industry. We found that increasing access to cost and energy savings data will promote uptake of PPL control technologies and allow designers to better incorporate PPLs into building design. Improving access to funding for PPL energy efficiency projects and addressing the split-incentive problem will increase adoption of PPL efficiency and control. Code bodies should continue to include PPL monitoring and reduction measures in energy codes. Key building stakeholders, including cybersecurity and information technology teams, should be involved in PPL monitoring and reduction strategy processes for successful implementation.

The EU energy efficiency directive (EED) includes provisions to stimulate increased energy efficiency in companies. Mandatory provisions were first introduced in 2012 and recast in 2023. Policy learning has been suggested as an important route to policy change. This paper analyses how and why policy learning helped revising EU legislation to enhance energy efficiency in companies, using provisions of mandatory energy audits as a case. Negative experience from member states’ governments with the original provisions were voiced shortly after the adoption of EED. A complex process going back and forth between member state and EU levels led by a learning agent facilitated collective learning and change of beliefs, first in member states then in the Council. Several cognitive biases among individuals in the European Commission led to non-learning at the individual level and blocked learning at the collective level. This further blocked policy learning in the EU when EED was amended in 2018. However, external crises and the entering office of a new Commission College in 2019 made the Commission to reconsider its beliefs. Political leadership opened a window for individual and collective learning in the Commission and policy learning in the EU when provisions were changed with the recast of EED in 2023. This suggests that individual and collective learning in the EC is key for policy change to happen. Without new beliefs in the EC, it is hard to get a topic onto the policy agenda. The paper proposes policy recommendations on how to facilitate policy learning and suggests areas for further research.

Buildings can play an important role in reducing GHG emissions through increased energy efficiency. The European Commission mandates that all new buildings should be “zero emission buildings” (ZEB), aiming at a zero GHG emission building stock by 2050. The extent to which ZEB can contribute to reduced GHG emissions, however, varies between countries, due to different energy systems. It is also important to consider other environmental effects to avoid that climate benefits come with unintended consequences. Here, we explore the life-cycle environmental performance for a ZEB in a case where electricity and heating are largely fossil-free. The assessment concentrates on i) environmental impact of the use stage in relation to the product stage, ii) the interrelation between different energy sources, with focus on household electricity, and iii) the performance for more impact categories than primary energy use and climate change. While our results generally support the use of ZEBs from an environmental perspective, they also show that the climate benefit in this setting is marginal. However, given that energy systems are connected and energy savings in one place can reduce the demand for fossil energy elsewhere, the climate benefit of ZEBs is likely underestimated. Besides methodological implications for future studies, this indicates that current EU policy is promising, as incentives for implementation of ZEBs are unaffected by domestic effects.

In this paper we re-examine the relationship between global Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Primary Energy Use (PEU) and Economic Energy Efficiency (EEE) to explore how investment in energy efficiency causes rebound in energy use at the global scale. Assuming GDP is a measure of final useful work, we construct and fit a biophysics-inspired nonlinear dynamic model to global GDP, PEU and EEE data from 1900—2018 and use it to estimate how energy efficiency investments relate to output growth and hence economy-wide rebound effects. We illustrate the effects of future deployment of enhanced energy efficiency investments using two scenarios through to 2100. The first maximizes GDP growth, requiring energy efficiency investment to rise ~ twofold. Here there is no decrease in PEU growth because economy-wide rebound effects dominate. The second scenario minimizes PEU growth by increasing energy efficiency investment ~ 3.5 fold. Here PEU and GDP growth are near fully decoupled and rebound effects are minimal, although this results in a long run, zero output growth regime. We argue it is this latter regime that is compatible with the deployment of enhanced energy efficiency to meet climate objectives. However, while output growth maximising regimes prevail, efficiency-led pledges on energy use and emissions reduction appear at risk of failure at the global scale.

Efficient energy demand management in the residential sector must be designed based on a sufficient understanding of factors. This study focuses on apartments, a mainstream housing type in Korea. The combination of factor analysis and quantile regression analysis provides insight into the sociocultural meaning of home appliance ownership and use pattern and the differential impact on electricity consumption. The eight representative home appliances closely related to electricity consumption in the household sector are related to household composition, life cycle, economic ability, education, and occupation type. Additionally, the influence of home appliances on electricity consumption is not constant and is differentiated depending on the consumption level of each household. These attempts can provide customized information on specific housing type groups emerging in the future economic development and urban development process. In residential energy demand management, further segmentation and specification of the target and content of information provision will increase the effectiveness of policy achievement.