Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Buildings
The normal way things are done in the business world is
to do something if it saves money, but that does not seem
to work in the buildings sector. If the objective is to
decrease energy use and thereby decrease greenhouse
gas emission, external pressure has to be applied.
Appliance standards have already been shown to be
cost-effective and we need more of them. The American
Council on an Energy Ef
cient Economy (
www.ACEEE.
org
) estimates that present appliance standards in the
United States have already saved about
billion kWh
of electricity which at a cost of
cents per kWh amounts
to
billion. Since appliances continue to wear out and
be replaced by newer models, the same standards are
estimated to save another
$
$
billion in today
'
s dollars
(the ACEEE estimate is
$
billion in
dollars) over
the period from now to
.
The ACEEE gives a collection of suggested additions
to the list of items having standards set and estimates that
implementing those would give bene
ts amounting to
about
five times the costs of implementation. The prob-
lem in implementing standards for new items is the dis-
connect between those who bear the cost and those who
reap the bene
ts. The manufacturer
'
s cost goes up while
the user
is costs go down. A manufacturer is afraid that if
he alone implements a money-saving item that increases
his price while his competitors do not, he will lose busi-
ness. The way around this is to have a requirement that all
have to meet. We need more items covered by energy-
ef
'
ciency standards and these standards need periodic
updating as technology improves.
