Energy sustainability

Home > Architecture and Design > Sustainability in Design > Energy sustainability

This type of sustainability focuses on designing products and systems that promote energy efficiency and use renewable energy sources.

Renewable Energy Sources: Energy sources that can be replenished naturally and are not finite resources, such as solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass.
Energy Efficiency: The practice of reducing the amount of energy needed to perform a task or operate a system, through the use of efficient technologies, processes, and practices.
Green Building Design: Designing buildings that maximize energy efficiency, minimize environmental impact, and incorporate renewable energy sources.
Energy Management and Conservation: The process of monitoring, controlling, and reducing energy consumption in buildings, homes, and businesses.
Smart Grid Technology: Technology that enables the efficient, reliable, and secure integration of renewable energy sources into the power grid, and helps balance supply and demand.
Life-cycle Assessment: A comprehensive analysis of the environmental impact of a product or service throughout its entire life cycle, from raw material extraction to disposal.
Carbon Footprint: The amount of greenhouse gases emitted by an individual, organization, or product, throughout its life cycle.
Energy Storage: The process of storing energy to be used at a later time, using technologies such as batteries, flywheels, and pumped hydro storage.
Distributed Energy Systems: Decentralized energy systems that allow for the production and distribution of energy from multiple small-scale sources, such as solar panels and wind turbines.
Policy and Regulation: Government policies and regulations aimed at promoting energy sustainability, such as renewable energy incentives, energy efficiency standards, and carbon taxes.
Renewable energy sustainability: This refers to the use of renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass to reduce carbon emissions.
Energy-efficient sustainability: This refers to the design and construction practices that reduce the energy requirements of buildings, appliances, and other equipment.
Green building sustainability: This refers to designing buildings that are eco-friendly by using energy-efficient materials, natural ventilation, and daylight to reduce energy consumption.
Energy recovery sustainability: This refers to the practice of recycling waste heat and converting it into useful energy.
Sustainable transportation sustainability: This refers to the use of alternative fuels, electric and hybrid vehicles, and efficient public transportation to reduce CO2 emissions.
Passive solar design sustainability: This refers to designing buildings that capture natural light, heat, and coolness from the sun to reduce energy consumption.
Integrated sustainability: This refers to the coordination of sustainability in all aspects of design, including energy, water, waste, and material use.
Net-zero energy sustainability: This refers to designing buildings that produce as much energy as they consume, using renewable energy sources and energy-efficient design.
Life-cycle sustainability: This refers to the consideration of environmental impacts throughout the entire life cycle of a product or building, including design, manufacturing, use, and disposal.
Carbon footprint sustainability: This refers to the measurement and reduction of carbon emissions produced by a product or building throughout its life cycle.
- "Renewable resources include sunlight, wind, the movement of water, and geothermal heat."
- "Although most renewable energy sources are sustainable, some are not."
- "Renewable energy is often used for electricity generation, heating and cooling."
- "Renewable energy projects are typically large-scale, but they are also suited to rural and remote areas and developing countries."
- "From 2011 to 2021, renewable energy grew from 20% to 28% of global electricity supply."
- "Use of fossil energy shrank from 68% to 62%, and nuclear from 12% to 10%."
- "Power from sun and wind increased from 2% to 10%."
- "The share of hydropower decreased from 16% to 15%."
- "There are 3,146 gigawatts installed in 135 countries."
- "156 countries have laws regulating the renewable energy sector."
- "In 2021, China accounted for almost half of the global increase in renewable electricity."
- "Globally there are over 10 million jobs associated with the renewable energy industries."
- "Solar photovoltaics being the largest renewable employer."
- "Renewable energy systems are rapidly becoming more efficient and cheaper."
- "A large majority of worldwide newly installed electricity capacity being renewable."
- "Many nations around the world already have renewable energy contributing more than 20% of their total energy supply."
- "Some studies have shown that a global transition to 100% renewable energy across all sectors – power, heat, transport, and industry – is feasible and economically viable."
- "Deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies is resulting in significant energy security, climate change mitigation, and economic benefits."
- "Renewables are being hindered by hundreds of billions of dollars of fossil fuel subsidies."
- "In international public opinion surveys, there is strong support for renewables such as solar power and wind power."