BELDA Research Objectives

The emission of carbon dioxide has been continuously increasing in the world, and 40% of its emission is from the building sector. Especially, its emission from emerging countries and developing countries in the Asia has been significantly increasing, so that it is obviously necessary that introducing energy saving and renewable energy in order to reduce the increase of the emission of carbon dioxide. Therefore, it is important to propose specific measures with understanding the patterns of actual energy supply and demand in these countries in order to achieve efficient introduction of energy saving and renewable energy.

In Japan, existing researches about the energy consumption toward the building sector are as follows: “National Survey about energy consumption in housing sector” in 2003 from the Architectural Institute in Japan. The DECC research committee in Institute for Building Environment and Energy Conservation provides an open access database for national statistics in the field of energy consumption of private buildings, and this database is widely exploited in the actual policy making and development of commercial products.

However, the data of energy demand and consumption in Asian countries is unfortunately limited. The macro statistical data in supply side exist, but the demand side of energy consumption is limited and not well structured among Asian researchers.

BELDA (Building Energy Structure and Lifestyle Database of the Asia) targets emerging countries and developing countries in the South East Asia. Since these countries are rapidly growing, the current measures can provide strong positive effects for control of their energy demand in the future. BELDA will develop a common database of energy consumption in the building sector in Asian countries, create scenarios for reducing carbon dioxide emissions and provide platform which can evaluate gradual measures based on the level of their development. In the future, BELDA is to build a comprehensive platform in the Asia with including Japan and China.

BELDA Overview

The purpose of BELDA is to develop a common database of energy consumption in the building sector in the Asian countries, creates scenarios with use of quantitative numerical modeling, provides web-based platform which can evaluate effects of measures and policies following the stage of development, and develop international networks among scholars with enhanced use of the platform.

BELDA obtained The Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (ERTDF) from the Ministry of the Environment (MOE) as financial support. The Jyukankyo Research Institute and the Waseda University have been taken initiatives to collect and analyze existing researches and new statistical data with cooperation of various research institute and universities in the Asian countries including Japan.

In 2017 as the final year of this project, BELDA will provide a joint proposal for targeted countries in order to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide from the building sector.