DAY ONE:

Welcome

The workshop kicked off on Wednesday, January 25th in Hong Kong, China.  The workshop is run by APERC and hosted by Hong Kong. A few economies are participating through WebX - Japan and Chile

During the welcoming remarks, Mr. Edward Yau, JP - the Secretary for the Environment, HKSAR provided some insight into the viewpoints of Hong Kong coming into this meeting.  Mr. Yau talked about the leadership of APEC - moving forward on environmental goals, even before steps taken in 2009 in Copenhagen. He also made several main points specific to the goals of the CEEDS workshop:

• Cities are  not only important but provide a shared challenge on energy efficiency across economies
• Improving building efficiency can change our society because, in part, because they are where we live and work
• Hong Kong is wiling to take a common leadership role, and serve as an example of a city addressing challenges; they have set a goal to reduce energy consumption by 50-60% by 2020
• (They have set up a $16M USD incentive scheme for building managers to conduct building audits and improving building management; and are also very focused on forming partnerships with the private sector)
   

Energy Saving Potential

James Russell, a researcher with APERC, gave a presentation on a methodology and study to estimate the energy saving potential among APEC economies. Among other benefits, if one can estimate savings from codes, this allows policymakers to prioritize associated policies. The methodology involved building an economy-specific prototype for representative building types (office retail, apartment, single family home) from the stock and then, after estimating savings with the model, extrapolating to the rest of the building stock. Applied 2009 IECC (not as the "best" code but as a code that is generally comprehensive and could be used as a baseline; high efficiency motors was added). Used eQUEST 3.63: the Quick Energy Simulation Tool to create the prototypes and then apply the code.  Looking across economies participating in the workshop, savings potential ranged from 6% in apartment buildings in Mexico to 45% in retail in Malaysia and Indonesia. 

Although all savings, when compared to economy-wide energy demand, range lower than 1%, the study was very conservative, was limited to cities and assumptions about only a few building types.  Future work is needed to finetune and expand the model and look at demand reductions.

Discussion

It would be good to understand the impact of specific requirements and where code measures may actually increase energy consumption.  Also, considering time of use, and adding additional requirements will have a significant impact. 

Also, it would be helpful to combine building requirements (with long life) and appliance standards (shorter life) to put together a compelling case for energy efficiency for policymakers.