SaFEGround - Sustainable, Flexible and Efficient Ground-source heating and cooling systems

Completed

Renewable Energy Sources(Geothermal Energy)

Basic and strategic applied research

SOCIAL SCIENCES (Economics and Econometrics)
PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS (Metallurgy and Materials)
ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Civil Engineering)
ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering)
ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Architecture and the Built Environment)
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES (Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences)

Systems Analysis related to energy R&D (Energy modelling)
Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Policy and regulation)
Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Other sociological economical and environmental impact of energy)

Dr DMG Taborda
Civil and Environmental Eng
Imperial College London

Standard

EPSRC

01 September 2021

31 May 2025

45 months

£1,520,505

Energy

London

Energy : Energy

Dr DMG Taborda, Civil and Environmental Eng, Imperial College London

Dr A Al-Tabbaa, Engineering, University of Cambridge
Professor L Black, Civil Engineering, University of Leeds
Dr N Mac Dowell, Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London
Dr CN Markides, Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London
Professor A A Michaelides, Business School, Imperial College London
Dr AJ Wright, Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development (IESD), De Montfort University

Project Contact, Geotechnical Consulting Group Ltd
Project Contact, Hubbard Products Limited
Project Contact, Ove Arup & Partners Ltd
Project Contact, E.ON UK (formerly PowerGen)
Project Contact, Cementation Foundations Skanska Ltd
Project Contact, ENERCRET Ltd
Project Contact, Mitsubishi Electric R&D Centre Europe BV
Project Contact, isoenergy
Project Contact, Leicester City Council
Project Contact, Phase Change Material Products Limited
Project Contact, Dept for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT)
Project Contact, Atkins

Through the 2008 Climate Change act, the UK committed to reduce by 80% its carbon emissions. While great progress has been made so far, data suggests that reductions in emissions have been achieved through switching electricity production to greener, more environmentally friendly sources, such as offshore wind. Clearly, it is inevitable that, to achieve further reductions in carbon emissions, we need to look for improvements elsewhere, such as heating and cooling of buildings, which accounts for 25% of all UK final energy consumption and 15% of carbon emissions.Project SaFEGround aims to provide a template for reducing emissions associated to heating and cooling through the deployment of heat pumps. These are efficient devices capable of extracting heat from a storage medium, e.g. air for air-source heat pumps or the ground for ground-source heat pumps, and this is done with high efficiency, since for each unit of electricity consumed by the system, it is usual to get 3-4 units of heat. Clearly, these are more environmentally-friendly than boilers as they require only electricity, which, as mentioned above, is increasingly being generated from renewable and low-carbon sources.Therefore, SaFEGround will investigate how ground-source heat pumps can be coupled with civil engineering structures to deliver low-carbon heating and cooling in a sustainable, safe and efficient manner. To achieve this, SaFEGround will combine research on material science, heat pump technology, energy geotechnics, building energy systems modelling, whole-system modelling and finance, to demonstrate that ground source energy systems can play an important role in the UK's future low-carbon energy mix in a cost-effective manner.

07/10/21