How to make cities more energy efficient
Many programs encourage owners of homes and other buildings to improve their energy efficiency, sometimes offering substantial subsidies or tax incentives for doing so. Now, planners may have a way to determine where such programs can get the most return for that investment: New research shows how to identify the buildings where retrofitting for energy efficiency will have the biggest impact on a city’s overall greenhouse gas emissions. The new findings, which require only minimal information about the buildings and their energy use, was developed by Marta González and Franz-Josef Ulm, MIT professors of civil and environmental engineering; Mohammad Javad Abdolhosseini Qomi PhD ’15, who was graduate student when the research was conducted; and five others at MIT and other institutions. The results are being reported in the journal Interface, published by the Royal Society in the U.K. The authors point out that 44 percent of all energy used in buildings in...