• Energy Research

Buildings in private and domestic use are responsible for about 30% of the global greenhouse gas emissions attributable mainly to their need for heating and cooling energy. This corresponds to about 40% of the global final energy consumption. Therefore, a viable implementation of building energy efficiency policies is inevitable to realize a transformation of the energy system to mitigate climate change. Within the building sector lies a huge potential for emission reduction consisting in the renovation of the existing building stock and climate-friendly building guidelines applicable to new constructions, both adapting CO2-neutral technology solutions. However, as there are several different pathways leading to a decarbonized energy system, there is always the question which political and technological solutions are most efficient, effective, and feasible. This paper aims to analyze building efficiency policy measures and instruments and the related technological solutions in two front-runner countries of the energy transition, possessing different structural conditions: Germany and Norway. We hence apply a comparative approach which allows us to present and assess the policies in place. The paper answers three research questions: (1) Which policies prevail in Germany and Norway to foster the deployment of energy efficient and decarbonized solutions for residential buildings? (2) How do these policies respond to country-specific barriers to the energy transition in the building sector, and (3) What effects do they have on the actual implementation of technological and societal solutions? This research provides a new insight to the highly relevant topic of energy efficiency in buildings in the context of international Intended Nationally Determined Contribution benchmarking and discusses some unsolved trade-offs in the translation of the global climate governance into the national building sector.

Silicides have attracted considerable attention for use in thermoelectric generators due mainly to low cost, low toxicity and light weight, in contrast to conventional materials such as bismuth and lead telluride. Most reported work has focused on optimizing the materials properties while little has been done on module testing. In this work we have designed and tested modules based on N-type magnesium silicide Mg2(Si-Sn), abbreviated MGS, and P-type Higher Manganese Silicide, abbreviated HMS. The main novelty of our module design is the use of spring loaded contacts on the cold side which mitigate the effect of thermal expansion mismatch between the MGS and the HMS. We report tests carried out on three modules at different temperatures and electric loads. At a hot side temperature of 405 °C we obtained a maximum power of 1.04 W and at 735 °C we obtained 3.24 W. The power per thermoelectric material cross section area ranged from 1 to 3 W cm-2. We used the modeling tool COMSOL to estimate efficiencies at 405 and 735 °C and obtained values of 3.7% and 5.3% respectively - to our knowledge the highest reported value to date for silicide based modules. Post-test examination showed significant degradation of the N-type (MGS) legs at the higher hot side temperatures. Further work is underway to improve the lifetime and degradation issues. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd.