Reducing CO2 emissions from building energy consumption

The problem of over-consumption of natural resources and the consequence of environmental damage may drive people to change their consumption attitude, including a change of their behavior in using energy. In New Zealand, 90% of CO2 emissions are attributable to energy consumption. As this country is committed to a return to CO2 emissions at 1990 levels by 2012, to reach this goal, reduction of CO2 emissions has to be 14% of the current emissions from energy. It will not only be the concern of the Government, but should also be the public and private sector's concerns. To reduce CO2 emissions from buildings, it is necessary to know how much energy can be saved. The New Zealand building sector appears to have no such collected information. For some types of buildings, such as institutional buildings, energy consumption and conservation profiles have not been revealed. This paper indicates that in one university campus, through continuous energy saving activities, building energy consumption figures dropped from 219 kWh/m(2)/Yr in 1979 to 130.2 kWh/m(2)/Yr in 1994, however, more energy savings were possible. Further simulation work shows that from a change of behavior in the use of energy, for example reducing higher heating temperatures to a reasonable level, and turning off lights when daylight is available, then the total energy consumption could be reduced by around 20% to 50%. From these savings, a reduction of CO2 emissions would be 24-60%.