Energy consumption in residential buildings is one of the major sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the U.S. Most of the efforts to minimize these emissions contemplate on construction of new high performance green buildings rather than retrofitting the existing residential building stock, which has the greatest emission reduction potential. In this paper, rapidly increasing GHG emissi...

Buildings with cast-in-situ reinforced concrete shear walls are widespread in many earthquake-prone countries and regions, such as Canada, Chile, Romania, Turkey, Colombia, the republics of the former Soviet Union, etc. This type of construction has been practiced since the 960s in urban regions for mediumto high-rise buildings (4 to 35 stories high). Shear wall buildings are usually regular in...

results does not imply CIEE endorsement of or agreement with these findings, nor that of any CIEE sponsor. developed this project for the Pacific Gas and Electric Company under Contract S9902A, to support PG&E's energy efficiency programs in new and existing residential buildings. The Project manager for PG&E is Lance Elberling (with the assistance of Marshall Hunt). The authors would like to t...

Commissioning is arguably the single most cost-effective strategy for reducing energy, costs, and greenhouse gas emissions in buildings today. Although commissioning has earned increased recognition in recent years, it remains an enigmatic practice whose visibility severely lags its potential. The application of commissioning to new buildings ensures that they deliver or exceed the performance ...

According to research, between 15 to 20 percent of the total energy consumption of every country is used for residential spaces. This amount is explanatory of the high cost and will follow the destruction of natural resources and environmental demolition. The aim of this research is to recognize earth thermal ability and its usage in public buildings and especially in private buildings in order...

Residential and commercial buildings accounted for about 68% of the total U.S. electricity consumption in 2002. Improving the energy efficiency of buildings can save energy, reduce cost, and protect the global environment. In this research, artificial neural network is employed to model and predict the facility power usage of campus buildings. The prediction is based on the building power usage...

Solar shading designs are important for reduction of building energy consumption and improvement of indoor thermal environment. This paper carried out a number of building simulations for evaluation of the energy performance of different shading devices based on incremental costs. The results show that movable shading devices lower incremental costs by up to 50% compared with fixed ones for the...

In order to maintain good performance and a timeefficient calculation period to simulate an entire urban environment, the simulation efforts for single buildings must be as simple as possible. By generalizing all heating load curves using particular density functions, the result is a heating density function for non-residential buildings considering particular constructions and individual occup...

To investigate the energy performance of solar shading devices, this paper carried out a survey on the current status of solar shading utilization in buildings in Ningbo and performed building simulations to evaluate the energy savings potential by adopting different solar shading devices. Results show that solar shading utilization in this area is not popular and effective, and should be consi...

reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions have become a worldwide necessity. iran has the sixteenth ranking position of global greenhouse gas emissions and its rate of growth is above global average. built environments are responsible for about 40% of energy consumption and it is generally approved that the greatest portion of built environment is dedicated to residential land us...