[Greenbuilding] Green is 9%

[Jason Holstine]

Excellent point.


On 7/24/12 6:24 PM, "Reuben Deumling" <9watts at gmail.com> wrote:

> How interesting. Thanks for sending this.
> What I want to know is whether the homes (houses we used to call them) so
> labeled used less energy (or water, or whatever) than the houses in the
> control group. Of course the occupants would be an important component, left
> out of this article.
> 
> I've copied the passages below to the list before:
> 
> The 437 pg. report by RLW Analytics, which includes the following excerpts can
> be found at the www.CALMAC.org <http://www.CALMAC.org>  site.
> It is titled: EVALUATION, MEASUREMENT, AND VERIFICATION OF THE 2004 & 2005
> CALIFORNIA STATEWIDE ENERGY STAR® NEW HOMES PROGRAM.
> 
> "The billing analysis performed for CZ8 and CZ12 [CA climate zones 8 & 12]
> indicates that participants use more electricity and fewer therms than
> non-participants. Controlling for
> housing characteristics as well as demographic information, ENERGY STAR® homes
> participants used more energy with the exception of CZ12 gas usage.  The
> demographic 
> question results all point to non-participants using more energy than
> participants, and
> even controlling for these variables, we see participants with higher usage."
> (p.16)
> 
> 
> "Occupant Behavior is as Important as Building Characteristics
> Our billing analysis results, showing negative program savings in climate
> zones that the
> metering [modeling?] indicates positive savings, highlighted the fact that
> occupant behavior is one of the largest drivers of energy consumption. For
> this reason, future evaluations may want  to explore ESH occupant behaviors.
> If people who choose to buy ENERGY STAR® homes are already conservation minded
> people and therefore purchase the homes to be ecofriendly or "green" than they
> may be conservative in their energy use already. This
> would reduce the energy usage, and therefore the energy savings of the home.
> Conversely a person who knows they already consume a lot of energy may
> purchase an
> ENERGY STAR® home because even with no change in their behavior, they will
> still have 
> reduced bills; a person may even increase their comfort level, for example by
> lowering
> the temperature in their home during the summer, because they think their home
> is
> more efficient and they still may consume less energy.
> Whether one or the other behavior is more prevalent would not only have a
> significant
> impact on estimated savings, but also has implications for how to best market
> a new
> construction residential energy efficiency program." ( p.159)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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