18 December 2013: The International Energy Agency (IEA) has released a report, titled ‘Technology Roadmap: Energy Efficient Building Envelopes,’ which illustrates how improving primary thermal barriers of buildings can cut buildings’ total energy consumption by nearly 20%. The report offers policy guidance on how to encourage the incorporation of new building technologies into building retrofitting and new construction.

The report focuses on the building “envelope,” also called the shell, fabric or enclosure, which forms the boundary between itself and the outdoors. It analyzes new wall, window, door, roof and floor technologies that can markedly improve energy efficiency of both heating and cooling buildings – sometimes by up to 40%. Furthermore, the report offers a roadmap to bring these current niche technologies into the mainstream, highlighting policies necessary to reduce costs of low or zero-energy building construction, and to incentivize retrofitting of existing buildings.

The IEA notes that this report is especially prescient given that over half the buildings that will be required by emerging economies in 2050 have yet to be built and could significantly benefit from the use of such advanced technologies. [IEA Press Release] [Publication: Technology Roadmap: Energy Efficient Building Envelopes]