Prediction of energy saving policies effects reflecting decision making process of office building owners and tenants

Abstract

Currently, energy savings in buildings are an urgent issue to be tackled in the world widely. In Japan, energy savings in buildings have been promoted through some policies such as energy saving standard compliance, Building-Housing Energy-efficiency Labeling System (BELS), and relevant subsidies. For more efficient policy making, it is important to estimate how those policies work and which of them should be considered to be important. Firstly, we developed agent-based simulation incorporating decision making model of building owners and tenants. Building owner agents apply energy retrofit based on energy saving policies and tenant agents move their offices to maximize profits based on a given circumstances such as energy efficiencies of buildings. Their decisions influence each other and we analyzed their behavior. Since the demonstration for all actual office buildings in target area is costly task, it was conducted in downscaled area while keeping statistical characteristics of office buildings in target area. The target was a business district in Tokyo, Japan. Then using the simulation, we demonstrated the effects of the policies. The results show that it is not easy to accelerate energy saving with only subsidies; appropriately combining subsidies and standard compliance obligations allows energy saving to be progressed.