Environmental issues in planning building energy technologies R ampersand D in the United States

The US Department of Energy's Office of Building Technologies (OBT) has begun studies on the relationship and impact of buildings energy use on the environment, particularly with respect to global climate change, acid rain, stratospheric ozone depletion, and indoor air quality. The paper presents an overview of international and US federal activity in global change to set OBT's activities in context. The paper then reviews briefly the contribution of buildings to atmospheric problems through building energy use. OBT's program primarily supports projects with indirect environmental impacts through energy efficiency (e.g., thermally activated heat pumps use natural gas instead of electricity) and the use of renewables in buildings. The paper briefly describes the OBT program and covers an inventory of projects that OBT has funded on environmental/building problems. Analyses have included three kinds of topics: (1) CFC substitutes for refrigeration equipment, (2) incorporating the cost of externalities into utility electricity generation, and (3) indoor air quality. The paper shows how environmental issues are being taken into account in planning the US R ampersand D program in building energy technologies. 27 refs