ABSTRACT
Strategies for reducing demand from buildings tend to focus on either increasing performance or reducing standards - for example, either by increasing insulation levels or by lowering temperatures in buildings during the cold part of the year. The predominant demand for energy in buildings is for space heating, with water heating, lighting and appliances following some way behind. The Building Regulations will barely touch the existing building stock, with only a very small proportion being significantly modified each year. In 1865, the British economist and logician, William Jevons, published a book, The Coal Question, in which he argued that Britain's wealth and power derived from its abundant coal, but that, as coal was a finite resource, the country's reserves were being fast exhausted. Calculations of the combined demand from the operational and capital energy of a building are ideally captured using a standard life-cycle-assessment (LCA) approach, which provides a means of measuring and recording both energy and carbon dioxide emissions.
