In an era of U.S. energy abundance, the persistently high energy bills paid by low-income households is troubling. After decades of weatherization and bill-payment programs, low-income households still spend a higher percent of their income on electricity and gas bills than any other income group. Their energy burden is not declining, and it remains persistently high in particular geographies such as the South, rural America, and minority communities. As public agencies and utilities attempt to transition to a sustainable energy future, many of the programs that promote energy efficiency, rooftop solar, electric vehicles, and home batteries are largely inaccessible to low-income households due to affordability barriers. This review describes the ecosystem of stakeholders and programs, and identifies promising opportunities to address low-income energy affordability, such as behavioral economics, data analytics, and leveraging health care benefits. Scalable approaches require linking programs and policies to tackle the complex web of causes and impacts faced by financially constrained households. Prog. Energy 2 (2020) 042003 M A Brown et alNumerous clean energy programs fail tests of distributive justice, including many energy-efficiency programs, special rates for electric vehicles, and net metering of rooftop solar installations. Such programs are typically paid for in part by low-income ratepayers who do not receive commensurate benefits Huessy 2018, Carley et al 2018). Intergenerational equityIntergenerational equity adds a time dimension to the equity discussion by considering community obligations to future generations. Actions that serve to increase rather than limit the development options of future generations can be said to improve intergenerational equity (Norton 2005). In the field of clean energy, intergenerational equity frequently involves deliberating which aspects of the present should be maintained or changed for future generations (Williams-Rajee 2015). Most clean energy programs do work to reduce CO 2 emissions and as a result, contribute positively to intergenerational equity in some ways. How these programs may impact the social and economic contours of communities across generations has received much less emphasis. The context: multiple stakeholders in the low-income housing marketNumerous decision-makers and stakeholders influence the energy integrity of low-income housing. This highly fragmented affordable housing market challenges efforts to improve low-income energy affordability. Government agencies have administrative and regulatory roles that influence each of these stakeholders to varying degrees. In terms of word counts, energy utilities are mentioned most often in the abstracts of the 183 publications examined in this review. Local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and community-based groups are also key stakeholders based on this tally. At the other extreme, the terms 'building manager' and 'property manager' do not appear in the 183 abstracts, and 'landlord' and 'property ow...

In an era of U.S. energy abundance, the persistently high energy bills paid by low-income households is troubling. After decades of weatherization and bill-payment programs, low-income households still spend a higher percent of their income on their electricity and gas bills than any other income group. Their energy burden is not declining, and it remains persistently high in particular geographies such as the South, rural America, and minority communities. As public agencies and utilities attempt to transition to a sustainable energy future, many of the programs that promote energy efficiency, rooftop solar, electric vehicles, and home energy storage are largely inaccessible to low-income households. This review describes the ecosystem of stakeholders and programs, and identifies promising opportunities to address low-income energy affordability, such as behavioral economics, data analytics, and leveraging health care benefits. Scalable approaches require linking programs and policies to tackle the complex web of causes and impacts that financially constrained households face.

US cities are beginning to experiment with a regulatory approach to address information failures in the real estate market by mandating the energy benchmarking of commercial buildings. Understanding how a commercial building uses energy has many benefits; for example, it helps building owners and tenants identify poor-performing buildings and subsystems and it enables high-performing buildings to achieve greater occupancy rates, rents, and property values. This paper estimates the possible impacts of a national energy benchmarking mandate through analysis chiefly utilizing the Georgia Tech version of the National Energy Modeling System (GT-NEMS). Correcting input discount rates results in a 4.0% reduction in projected energy consumption for seven major classes of equipment relative to the reference case forecast in 2020, rising to 8.7% in 2035. Thus, the official US energy forecasts appear to overestimate future energy consumption by underestimating investments in energy-efficient equipment. Further discount rate reductions spurred by benchmarking policies yield another 1.3-1.4% in energy savings in 2020, increasing to 2.2-2.4% in 2035. Benchmarking would increase the purchase of energy-efficient equipment, reducing energy bills, CO 2 emissions, and conventional air pollution. Achieving comparable CO 2 savings would require more than tripling existing US solar capacity. Our analysis suggests that nearly 90% of the energy saved by a national benchmarking policy would benefit metropolitan areas, and the policy's benefits would outweigh its costs, both to the private sector and society broadly.

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This paper provides a global overview of the design, implementation, and evolution of building energy codes. Reflecting alternative policy goals, building energy codes differ significantly across the United States, the European Union, and China. This review uncovers numerous innovative practices including greenhouse gas emissions caps per square meter of building space, energy performance certificates with retrofit recommendations, and inclusion of renewable energy to achieve 'nearly zero-energy buildings'. These innovations motivated an assessment of an aggressive commercial building code applied to all US states, requiring both new construction and buildings with major modifications to comply with the latest version of the ASHRAE 90.1 Standards. Using the National Energy Modeling System (NEMS), we estimate that by 2035, such building codes in the United States could reduce energy for space heating, cooling, water heating, and lighting in commercial buildings by 16%, 15%, 20%, and 5%, respectively. Impacts on different fuels and building types, energy rates and bills as well as pollution emission reductions are also examined. decade, growing by 37.5 million m 2 . 2 With the bulk of this expansion anticipated to occur in developing countries, building-related policies will be important in managing future energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) will have a construction rate of about 1% annually. Meanwhile, the building stock in major non-OECD countries is expected to expand 5-10% annually over the next two decades. 3 Commercial buildings are increasing in relative importance, representing a larger share of floor space and energy consumption in the world. 2 In OECD countries, these buildings consumed about 32.2% of total electricity and 13.4% of total primary energy in 2012. 4 While commercial buildings' share of total energy consumption is relatively small in China today (representing only 5.3% of its electricity 188