Energy-Saving of New Residential Building Projects

Energy-Saving of New Residential Building Projects: Comparison

Please note this is a comparison between Version 4 by Nora Tang and Version 5 by Nora Tang.

The government’s supervision of new residential building projects’ (NRBPs) energy-saving can promote carbon neutrality policies within its jurisdiction. A scientific and systematic evaluation of NRBPs energy-saving reflects a government’s management performance. However, achieving accurate and reasonable results with unitary evaluation standards without considering regional characteristics is not easy.

new residential building project
energy-saving management
performance evaluation
energy conservation

1. Indicator Systems

The weights of the first-level indicator Ai in evaluating the regulatory performance of the Changsha Municipal Government (CMG) are different. Although the scale intensity control effect and the comprehensiveness of the project’s certification information are high, the overall weight is not much different. The weight vector WA = (0.1977, 0.2010, 0.1981, 0.2009, 0.2023) corresponding to the five first-level indicators can be considered of equal importance to the five aspects of government regulatory performance of energy-saving buildings in Changsha.

The energy-saving degree of the project in Changsha has the highest weight of the housing structure design (0.4791), which is much greater than the equipment configuration design (0.2939), the green layout (0.1264). Moreover, the renewable energy utilization information (0.1006) is different from the researchers’ past emphasis on land protection ^[1][2][3].

Government regulation should first consider the qualification criteria for enterprises and professionals ^[4], building energy-efficient material certification information ^[5], energy-saving certification of property management enterprises ^[6], building energy efficiency level, and other information. In this case, the energy-saving degree of 10 projects in Changsha is reflected in the three factors: building energy-saving material certification information, property management energy-saving certification information, and building energy-saving level information. Among them, the weight of X9 (0.6667) of the comprehensiveness of the building energy-saving material certification information in the project is much higher than that of other factor indicators, indicating that this indicator is the most important, followed by the project’s building energy-saving level information X11 (0.2061), and the weight of the property management energy-saving certification information (0.1273) is low.

It is crucial to explain the audit information of buildings’ energy consumption and adequate supervision of new energy-saving building projects. Based on the energy plan proposed by ^[7] as a performance criterion, we extend the indicators has been extended tto energy information and communication technologies, energy consumption statistics, energy consumption audits, and degree of information disclosure. However, through calculation, the simplified evaluation indicators (Table 1) include only two items: building energy consumption audit information and information disclosure. It shows that the performance of these two indicators determines the performance of government supervision in terms of the energy information manager of the project. Among them, the weight of building energy consumption audit information of 0.8939 is much higher than the degree of information disclosure (0.1061).

Table 1. Simplified evaluation index system.

Attribute	Index	H(A)	H(A-{x_i})	S_A(x_i)	W_xi	W_Ai
A₁	X₃	2.2498	2.2655	0.0157	0.1264	0.1977
	X₅		2.1903	0.0595	0.4791
	X₆		2.2133	0.0365	0.2939
	X₇		2.2623	0.0125	0.1006
A₂	X₉	2.2875	2.2765	0.011	0.6667	0.2010
	X₁₀		2.2896	0.0021	0.1273
	X₁₁		2.2909	0.0034	0.2061
A₃	X₁₄	2.2546	2.0794	0.1752	0.8939	0.1981
A₃	X₁₅	2.2546	2.2754	0.0208	0.1061	0.1981
A₄	X₁₆	2.2865	2.2872	0.0007	0.0461	0.2009
	X₁₇		2.2903	0.0038	0.2500
	X₁₈		2.2843	0.0022	0.1447
	X₁₉		2.2833	0.0032	0.2105
	X₂₀		2.2854	0.0011	0.0724
	X₂₁		2.2823	0.0042	0.2763
A₅	X₂₂	2.3026	-	-	1	0.2023

Among the government supervision performance of the energy-saving policies and system arrangement effects of the projects in Changsha, the incentive degree of the energy-saving policies X17 and the clarity of the policies X21 had the highest weights, 0.2500 and 0.2763, respectively; the effectiveness (degree) of the project review mechanism X19 was weighted third highest (0.2105), so these three factors are the most important in the evaluation of the performance of the CMG. This finding agrees with the research results of Mohammed et al. ^[8] and De Vries and Verhagen ^[9]. This shows that the degree of incentive of energy-saving policies, the clarity of policies, and the effectiveness of the project review mechanism must be paid attention to by the government, and the implementation of incentives, more publicity policies, and strict review are conducive to the energy-saving work of the project. Incentives are proposed that specific construction sites and construction personnel should be encouraged to save energy.

Not exceeding the total regional residential control X22, the rationality of the total power consumption index control X23, and the rationality of the total gas consumption index control X24. This is consistent with the “China Building Energy Conservation Annual Development Research Report 2018” which pointed that the total scale of residential buildings should be strengthened to clarify whether the project exceeds the total scale of residential buildings in the area. In this case, the simplified evaluation indicators (Table 1) only reflects that the project does not exceed the regional total residential control indicator X22, which shows that the regulatory performance of the CMG in terms of scale intensity control effect is reflected in one of the indicators of total residential control. In particular, it is worth mentioning that this indicator accounts for the highest proportion of all indicators at the first level (0.2023), indicating that the indicator has the most significant impact on the regulatory performance of the CMG. Therefore, the CMG should prioritize the control of the total number of residential buildings in the area, which has the most significant effect on improving energy saving.

The performance of the energy-saving index A1 of the project depends on the second-level indicators X5 and X6, i.e., the design of housing structure and equipment configuration. The weights of the second-level index Xi under the first-level index Ai are different. For example, the first-level indicator A1 includes four second-level indices X3, X5, X6, and X7, sorted by their weights as WX5 > WX6 > WX3 > WX7. These 16 indicators, extracted from the original 24 energy-saving supervision performance indicators, are aimed at this area, which together reflects the key content of the CMG’s energy-saving supervision of new projects in this area.

2. Case Performance Evaluation Results

The comprehensiveness of the certification information of project A2, the energy information management of project A3, and the arrangement effect of the energy-saving policy and system A4 can be seen in Figure 1. From the figure, aswe can be seen see that the five aspects (A1–A5) exhibit a high degree of confidence, with the level of good grades reaching the highest (0.828, 0.886, and 0.894). The confidence level and grade of the project’s energy-saving degree A1 and scale intensity control effect A5 showed an increasing trend, reaching the highest confidence level in the excellent level (0.681 and 0.932). It can be inferred that the government regulatory performance of Project One is good, especially in terms of the energy-saving degree and scale intensity control.

Figure 1. Results of the evaluation of indicators A1–A5 for project 1.

The evaluation grades of project 3, project 4, project 6, and project 10 are average while the evaluation grades of project 1, project 7, project 8, and project 9 are good. The evaluation grades of the remaining two projects are excellent. If we assume that ten projects are not graded and have equal weights of 0.1, we can use H2 the E-R model combination algorithm to obtain the CMG Energy Conservation Regulatory Performance Evaluation H1 (0.0269). H2 (0.1155), H3 (0.2441), H4 (0.3150), and H5 (0.2862). That is, 31.5% confidence level is good, and 28.62% confidence is excellent. This result is consistent with the analysis in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Evaluation results of 10 projects in Changsha.

The CMG has an excellent regulatory performance on energy conservation of new residential buildings. It notices the effect of scale intensity control, energy information management, and the comprehensiveness of project certification information. The project’s energy-saving degree A₁ and the energy-saving policy and system arrangement effect A4 score are relatively low, which thus need to be strengthened.

Consequently, the evaluation results can guide local governments to save energy and reduce emissions. For example, the energy efficiency of the ten NRBPs in Changsha, Hunan Province is mainly reflected in the design of sustainable site design and equipment configuration. Therefore, the CMG should pay more attention to the evaluation of energy consumption audit in policy supervision. Moreover, the government should emphasize the use of energy-saving material certification and energy-saving level information due to their significant weights.

Researchers should be cautious that all ten projects in this study were from the same area. To apply the research method in other geographic locations, researchers need to integrate the regional regulations and characteristics, repeat the calculation process, find the key energy-saving supervision issues, and then conduct a grade evaluation.

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