The Department of Energy (DOE) is eyeing to come out with design and construction guidelines for the residential sector to push for energy efficient homes.
This is part of the agency’s continued efforts to advance the country’s energy efficiency and conservation agenda.
The agency will move from the energy intensive sectors then proceed to less energy intensive sectors in coming out with guidelines in line with the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act of 2019, DOE-Energy Utilization and Management Bureau (EUMB) director Patrick Aquino said.
Last February, the DOE rolled out its policy providing the guidelines on the energy conserving design of buildings, to be updated every three years or earlier to take into consideration the rate of advancement in energy efficient technologies and practices.
“There are initiatives and interventions that you can deploy at the residential level to make residential households or smaller sized facilities and establishments more energy efficient,” Aquino said.
These designs—which can be as simple as location and sizes of windows, color of the roof, etc.—can cut down energy use and consumption in the household.
“What we’re trying to communicate down the line is, we will be going into that direction because of the latest data trends we’re seeing. We will be going into the space of residential construction, actually pushing not only appliances, but also calling the attention of the public that you can choose energy efficient roofing, energy efficient windows. There are a lot of things to cut back on energy consumption,” Aquino said.
Currently, 47 percent of electricity consumption has come from the residential sector.
However, the household level energy efficiency guidelines are only directed at consumer products.