Modern residential building energy codes provide a component tradeoff mechanism by which builders can trade reductions in the efficiency of some building components in trade for corresponding improvement in other components. One common tradeoff approach is based on maintaining a building "UA value," which represents the building envelope's overall thermal conductance. The building UA is...

Urbanization is one of the global megatrends of our time, unstoppable and irreversible. In 30 years, two-thirds of the world’s population will live in urban areas; 90 per cent of this urban growth will take place in less developed regions such as East Asia, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. These are regions where capacity and...

This document provides a holistic and integrated sustainable development framework for the development of liveable, economically productive, socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable cities and communities in China. The framework identifies key objectives and principles to achieve urban sustainability and provides specific guidelines for implementation and performance assessment.

This Global Status Report documents the status and trends of key indicators for energy use, emissions, technologies, policies, and investments to track the buildings and construction sector, globally and in key regions. Central findings of this report include:

Deployment of rooftop photovoltaics (PV) is technically constrained by the availability of suitable roof space as well as by the ability of the distribution network to absorb exported generation. Although Australian rooftop PV installations are at record levels, deployment is uneven across different building types, with commercial, industrial and multi-occupancy residential buildings lagging behind the...