Issue link: https://hi.iaq.net/i/191637
Climate Change, the Indoor Environment, and Health 8 Building Ventilation, Weatherization, and Energy Use High energy costs and climate-change mitigation efforts are creating pressures to decrease ventilation rates in buildings as a means of reducing the energy used to cool or warm indoor air. This chapter concentrates on the interrelated issues of building energy use, emissions from building materials, weatherization, and ventilation and on how they affect occupants. It addresses energy consumption in buildings, the means used to tighten buildings, programs to enhance the energy efficiency of buildings and reduce harmful emissions from building components, the training of personnel who implement weatherization programs, and the effect of tightening on ventilation, indoor environmental quality, and occupant health and productivity. The chapter concludes with the committee's observations regarding those issues. Ventilation affects indoor levels of air pollutants, indoor moisture levels, exposures to biologic agents, and the thermal environment of homes. Research on those topics as opposed to ventilation itself is addressed in Chapters 4–7. ENERGY USE IN BUILDINGS Energy use in buildings has been a concern in the United States since the oil embargoes of the 1970s but has gained new currency in recent years as a result of rising costs and an interest in limiting greenhouse-gas emissions. The Department of Energy (DOE) tracks trends in energy use. Its 2009 Buildings Energy Data Book, which has data through 2006, notes that the 209 Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.