System dynamics analysis of energy policies on building's performance

Various policies have been formulated by governments to reduce energy consumption in buildings. Evaluating the effectiveness of a proposed policy requires consideration of complex interrelationships that exist among many variables. Therefore, this research aims to develop a dynamic model to analyse the impact of energy policies on building performance. The principle of socio-technical systems as an approach to model this complexity has been advocated in this research. A System Dynamics model has been developed to simulate the intrinsic interrelationship between the dwellings, occupants and environment systems. This chapter will analyse the impact of various policy scenarios on energy consumption in building towards achieving the UK national targets; namely: improvements in the uptake of dwelling insulation measures, occupants' behavioural changes, and policy change on energy prices. An integrated scenario has been also assumed to combine the effect of the first three ones. The main findings indicate that it is unlikely for anyone scenario alone to meet the required binding reductions unless an integrated solution is adopted. The developed model considers various qualitative conditions that are not usually simulated using the traditional regression-based forecasting of energy use in buildings. The developed model can be used to test various policies other than the UK context considering various data sets of the model variables.