The impact of minimum OTTV legislation on building energy consumption

As a measure of building envelope performance, Overall Thermal Transfer Value (OTTV) has been regulated in many countries and regions in the world, while little research is done to evaluate its city-scale effect with energy consumption. In this paper, we develop an econometric energy epidemiology model to evaluate the impact of OTTV legislations on electricity consumption using Hong Kong as an example, as Hong Kong government is one of the first adopters of OTTV regulation. For this purpose, we construct a unique database on the energy consumption of residential and commercial buildings in Hong Kong, including 39092 buildings from 1982 to 2016. Noticeable contributions to the total building energy saving could be found from historical OTTV legislations by 2016. As predicted by the model, in 2030, the annual electricity reduction can reach approximately 20000TJ without further regulation amendment, which is an important support to the “HK3030” energy target.