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What works: Documenting energy conservation in buildings
Energy and Buildings, 8 (1985) 159 - 160
159
Book Review
WHAT WORKS: DOCUMENTING ENERGY CONSERVATION IN BUILDINGS Edited by Jeffrey Harris and co-edited by Carl Blumstein, American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, 1001 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 530, Washington, DC 20036; 1984: pp. 562; price: $54.95 (hardcover), ISBN 0-918249-01-5; $29.95 (softcover), ISBN 0-91824902-3. This is an unusual book in several respects. Casual examination suggests that it is a conference proceedings or anthology -- and it is in part. Over two thirds of its 562 pages are devoted to 35 selected papers from the Second Summer Study on Energy Efficient Buildings organized by the American Council for an Energy Efficient E c o n o m y and held at the University of California, Santa Cruz in August, 1982. The last 50 pages contain the abstracts for the other 115 papers presented at the Summer Study. This all sounds quite ordinary. But the conference on which this book is based was quite unusual. It was topical -- emphasizing energy conservation measures and approaches that w o r k in buildings -- as implied by the title. Empiricism was the order of the day. Results were presented and explained, with theory seeming almost incidental in most cases -- in sharp contrast to most energy conferences of the last decade. The participants included architects, engineers and other technologists but also included numerous planners, economists, sociologists, managers and others more directly concerned with implementing energy conservation than with improving the technology. The schedule at the conference permitted and encouraged the organization of numerous informal sessions to extend exploration of issues raised in papers or omitted from the formal program. The broad mix of conference participant disciplines and functions is clearly evident in the book. The most unusual organizational characteristic of this book is Part One which provides an 80-page summary of the important findings and issues raised in conference papers and subsequent discussions. This section presents an extended overview of the conference based on draft summaries prepared by session Leaders. These were subsequently edited and synthesized into a cohesive description of the important results of conference papers and sessions. This valuable feature should be more widely utilized when topical conferences are held. It enables the reader to develop a clear sense of the major results presented at the conference and synthesizes numerous papers to provide more general conclusions than provided by individual papers. It is long enough to provide significant detail but short enough to be read in an evening and it summarizes the entire conference, not just the thirty-five papers included in the book. While the conference participants represented a thorough mix of technologists and implementors, and many of the papers present material from both sides of a disciplinary " f e n c e " , the summary is arranged and the papers are grouped in a way which emphasizes the "technical" © Elsevier Sequoia/Printed in The Netherlands
160 or the " i m p l e m e n t a t i o n " aspects of projects. Since the book emphasizes results, it generally reflects the imbalance between residential and commercial building energy studies which has characterized the first decade of conservation research and implementation efforts in the United States: there is three or four times as much material dealing with residential conservation as with commercial building conservation. There are several papers dealing with multi-family housing, so the overall bias toward single-family housing is n o t as strong in this b o o k as it has been in the overall conservation efforts in the c o u n t r y . Part Two of What Works includes twelve papers on residential energy use, most of which report metered or m o n i t o r e d results for a group of retrofit or low energy houses or housing units. This group also includes two papers which summarize measured results from many other studies. There are three papers treating commercial buildings, one of which provides a summary of results for many different buildings and studies. Appliances are emphasized in the next group with two papers on the per f orm ance of improved appliances and equi pm ent and two papers on programs aimed at increasing the market penetration of efficient a p p l i a n c e s and equipment. Seven papers discuss problems associated with achieving quality audits and installations, energy rating systems and utility programs. Six papers emphasize behavioral influences on cons um pt i on and the equity issues surrounding the access of lowincome groups to conservation. Part Two concludes with three discussions of instrumentation and evaluation techniques. What Works provides the most comprehensive d o c u m e n t a t i o n I have seen in a single volume on the actual energy savings which have been achieved in large numbers of buildings in the field, the measures and technologies used and the different implementation approaches used. This is an i m por t ant book which establishes a baseline for what works and how well it works to achieve energy conservation. The underlying and at times explicit message of this book is that conservation works and saves energy and m oney, but the savings are often (perhaps generally) somewhat harder to achieve than was first thought. This applies to both the technology and to the implementation of conservation measures and programs. Perhaps we would make more rapid progress on bot h counts if more conferences brought the engineers and the implementors together. D. E. Claridge D epart m ent of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, 80309.
Corrigendum Options and applications of passive cooling, by B. Givoni, published in Energy and Buildings, 7 (1984) 297 - 300. Inadvertently Figure 1 on page 299 was included in this paper. It has no connection with the substance of the paper and is n o t m ent i oned in the text.
159
Book Review
WHAT WORKS: DOCUMENTING ENERGY CONSERVATION IN BUILDINGS Edited by Jeffrey Harris and co-edited by Carl Blumstein, American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, 1001 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 530, Washington, DC 20036; 1984: pp. 562; price: $54.95 (hardcover), ISBN 0-918249-01-5; $29.95 (softcover), ISBN 0-91824902-3. This is an unusual book in several respects. Casual examination suggests that it is a conference proceedings or anthology -- and it is in part. Over two thirds of its 562 pages are devoted to 35 selected papers from the Second Summer Study on Energy Efficient Buildings organized by the American Council for an Energy Efficient E c o n o m y and held at the University of California, Santa Cruz in August, 1982. The last 50 pages contain the abstracts for the other 115 papers presented at the Summer Study. This all sounds quite ordinary. But the conference on which this book is based was quite unusual. It was topical -- emphasizing energy conservation measures and approaches that w o r k in buildings -- as implied by the title. Empiricism was the order of the day. Results were presented and explained, with theory seeming almost incidental in most cases -- in sharp contrast to most energy conferences of the last decade. The participants included architects, engineers and other technologists but also included numerous planners, economists, sociologists, managers and others more directly concerned with implementing energy conservation than with improving the technology. The schedule at the conference permitted and encouraged the organization of numerous informal sessions to extend exploration of issues raised in papers or omitted from the formal program. The broad mix of conference participant disciplines and functions is clearly evident in the book. The most unusual organizational characteristic of this book is Part One which provides an 80-page summary of the important findings and issues raised in conference papers and subsequent discussions. This section presents an extended overview of the conference based on draft summaries prepared by session Leaders. These were subsequently edited and synthesized into a cohesive description of the important results of conference papers and sessions. This valuable feature should be more widely utilized when topical conferences are held. It enables the reader to develop a clear sense of the major results presented at the conference and synthesizes numerous papers to provide more general conclusions than provided by individual papers. It is long enough to provide significant detail but short enough to be read in an evening and it summarizes the entire conference, not just the thirty-five papers included in the book. While the conference participants represented a thorough mix of technologists and implementors, and many of the papers present material from both sides of a disciplinary " f e n c e " , the summary is arranged and the papers are grouped in a way which emphasizes the "technical" © Elsevier Sequoia/Printed in The Netherlands
160 or the " i m p l e m e n t a t i o n " aspects of projects. Since the book emphasizes results, it generally reflects the imbalance between residential and commercial building energy studies which has characterized the first decade of conservation research and implementation efforts in the United States: there is three or four times as much material dealing with residential conservation as with commercial building conservation. There are several papers dealing with multi-family housing, so the overall bias toward single-family housing is n o t as strong in this b o o k as it has been in the overall conservation efforts in the c o u n t r y . Part Two of What Works includes twelve papers on residential energy use, most of which report metered or m o n i t o r e d results for a group of retrofit or low energy houses or housing units. This group also includes two papers which summarize measured results from many other studies. There are three papers treating commercial buildings, one of which provides a summary of results for many different buildings and studies. Appliances are emphasized in the next group with two papers on the per f orm ance of improved appliances and equi pm ent and two papers on programs aimed at increasing the market penetration of efficient a p p l i a n c e s and equipment. Seven papers discuss problems associated with achieving quality audits and installations, energy rating systems and utility programs. Six papers emphasize behavioral influences on cons um pt i on and the equity issues surrounding the access of lowincome groups to conservation. Part Two concludes with three discussions of instrumentation and evaluation techniques. What Works provides the most comprehensive d o c u m e n t a t i o n I have seen in a single volume on the actual energy savings which have been achieved in large numbers of buildings in the field, the measures and technologies used and the different implementation approaches used. This is an i m por t ant book which establishes a baseline for what works and how well it works to achieve energy conservation. The underlying and at times explicit message of this book is that conservation works and saves energy and m oney, but the savings are often (perhaps generally) somewhat harder to achieve than was first thought. This applies to both the technology and to the implementation of conservation measures and programs. Perhaps we would make more rapid progress on bot h counts if more conferences brought the engineers and the implementors together. D. E. Claridge D epart m ent of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, 80309.
Corrigendum Options and applications of passive cooling, by B. Givoni, published in Energy and Buildings, 7 (1984) 297 - 300. Inadvertently Figure 1 on page 299 was included in this paper. It has no connection with the substance of the paper and is n o t m ent i oned in the text.