The effect of weighting factors on income-related energy inequalities: The case of Sweden's new building code
2021 (English)In: Journal of Physics: Conference Series. Volume 2069, Issue 1, IOP Publishing Ltd , 2021, Vol. 2069, no 1, article id 1Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
To ensure building construction with low heating demand, efficient use of sustainable energy carriers, and neutrality between heating technologies, Sweden recently introduced weighting factors (WFs) for different energy carriers which are now used in Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs). As EPC ratings are gaining increased influence in Swedish energy policy and regulation, with recent examples of buildings' EPC rating acting as base for imperative regulatory requirements, the introduction of WFs is likely to have significant effects on how policy and regulations are distributed in the multifamily building stock. As residents often are directly or indirectly affected by policy that either impose or trigger measures to be undertaken in their building, the aim of this paper is to analyse how WFs affect the assessed energy performance of buildings in different resident income groups. The results show that overall, reduced energy performance from WFs was more common in high-income areas than in low-income areas. However, although the total number of buildings in the lowest EPC ratings was reduced after introducing WFs, the resulting income distribution among worst-performing buildings was more skewed towards low-income households than before introducing WFs. As imperative regulatory requirements previously have targeted worst-performing buildings, these results indicate that energy-related inequalities in the housing stock have become more prominent and should be considered as to not disproportionately burden low-income residents in the energy transition of the housing stock.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
IOP Publishing Ltd , 2021. Vol. 2069, no 1, article id 1
Keywords [en]
Building codes, Heating, Housing, Building construction, Energy, Energy carriers, Energy performance, Heating demand, Heating technology, Housing stock, Low incomes, Regulatory requirements, Weighting factors, Energy efficiency
National Category
Building Technologies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:ri:diva-57502DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/2069/1/012102Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85121424649OAI: oai:DiVA.org:ri-57502DiVA, id: diva2:1623741
Conference
8th International Building Physics Conference, IBPC 2021, 25 August 2021 through 27 August 2021
Note
Funding details: Svenska Forskningsrådet Formas, 2017-01449; Funding text 1: This work was supported by The Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (Formas) [grant number 2017-01449] within the project National Building-Specific Information (NBI). The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
2021-12-302021-12-302023-05-25Bibliographically approved