Carbon Reduction in Buildings: A socio-technical, longitudinal study of carbon use in buildings

Completed

Energy Efficiency(Residential and commercial)

Basic and strategic applied research

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Civil Engineering)
ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Architecture and the Built Environment)
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

Not Cross-cutting

Professor K Lomas
Civil and Building Engineering
Loughborough University

Standard

EPSRC

01 October 2004

31 March 2009

54 months

£3,025,374

Energy

East Midlands

Infrastructure and Environment -- Process Environment and Sustainability

Professor K Lomas, Civil and Building Engineering, Loughborough University

Professor S Guy, Environment and Development, University of Manchester
Professor T Oreszczyn, Bartlett Sch of Env, Energy & Resources, University College London
Dr D Shipworth, UCL Energy Institute, University College London
Mr I Ward, Architectural Studies, University of Sheffield

Project Contact, Improvement & Development Agency for Local Government (IDeA)
Project Contact, National Energy Services
Project Contact, Connell Mott Macdonald
Project Contact, Yorkshire Forward
Project Contact, Rudloe Centre for Climate Change
Project Contact, Sustainable Development Commission
Project Contact, Town & Country Planning Assoc (TCPA)
Project Contact, Leicester City Council
Project Contact, Valuation Office Agency
Project Contact, East Midlands Electricity Ltd

Past efforts to reduce carbon emissions from the existing buildings have had limited success. Reasons for this include: the absence of a transparent and validated strategy for modelling energy use in the nations non-domestic building stock; a poor understanding of how people use energy in buildings, how they interact with new technology and how they respond to socio-technical energy conservation initiatives; a chronic shortage of openly available energy use data matched with descriptors of physical form, occupant characteristics and the installed appliances and services; and the absence of useable models for benchmarking, targeting and monitoring energy use in communities.Our vision is to create an innovative, public domain, socio-technical model of buildings applicable at national, regional, city and community level. It will predict current carbon emissions and the changes resulting from energy efficiency measures, the deployment of renewable energy technologies and the use of non-technical interventions . The model will be developed, validated and demonstrated using both existing data and new data collected in 4 towns from buildings which are representative of the nation s occupant/building stock profile. Potentially effective socio-technical interventions will be implemented and the long term impact monitored. Innovative disseminations routes are to be explored. The open architecture of the national model, the functioning community model and the data archive willbe of immense value to all those with a stake in a low-carbon future

01/01/07