Energy Efficient Communities

Overview

Since the first energy crisis in 1973 an increasing awareness of communities of their responsibility to optimise their energy supply and to minimise its environmental impact has been developed. As a consequence, in a number of countries new methods for the design of "energy efficient communities" have been developed and applied, described with the expression "Local Energy Planning "(LEP). During some 10 or 15 years of experience with LEP, major changes in approach, methods and instruments, and LEP objectives have come about.

The different methods, instruments and experiences developed in some interested IEA countries in the field of LEP shall be reviewed within Annex 22 to report on the present state of the art of LEP and develop an aid for the individual planner or urban manager to be used in concrete application cases. This Annex 22 can therefore be considered as a supplement to almost all other annexes of this IEA programme which are devoted rather to single buildings or subsystems of them than to "community systems".

The LEP process consists of two main components

• The actual process of planning and design.
• The transfer of the LEP results to the various groups involved to implement these results.

According to this, the Annex is structured into four Subtasks:

• Subtask A: Software Tools in Energy Planning.
• Subtask B: Models for the Calculation of Environmental Aspects.
• Subtask C: Means to Represent, Demonstrate and Advertise Planning Solutions.
• Subtask D: Implementation of the Results of Integrated Planning Procedures.

The work in this Annex 22 is shared between the Operating Agent (responsible for the overall project management and evaluation of results), the Lead Countries (responsible for working plan and evaluation of results within their respective subtask) and the other participating countries who prepare their individual national reports to be evaluated by the Lead Countries. EEC and OECD attend the workshops as observers.