Low carbon climate-responsive Heating and Cooling of Cities (LoHCool)

Completed

Energy Efficiency(Residential and commercial)

Basic and strategic applied research

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Electrical and Electronic Engineering)
ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Civil Engineering)
ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Architecture and the Built Environment)
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES (Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences)

Not Cross-cutting
Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Environmental dimensions)
Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Consumer attitudes and behaviour)
Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Technology acceptance)

Professor CA Short
Architecture
University of Cambridge

Standard

EPSRC

01 October 2015

31 March 2019

42 months

£798,987

Unknown

East of England

Energy : Energy

Professor CA Short, Architecture, University of Cambridge

Professor CSB Grimmond, Meteorology, University of Reading
Professor PM Guthrie, Engineering, University of Cambridge
Dr M Herzog, Geography, University of Cambridge
Professor K Lomas, Civil and Building Engineering, Loughborough University
Dr R Yao, Construction Management and Engineering, University of Reading

Project Contact, ARCC
Project Contact, Zhejiang Province Construction and Investment Group, China
Project Contact, Building Design Partnership (BDP)
Project Contact, China Academy of Building Research (CABR)
Project Contact, Shimao Group, China
Project Contact, China Association of Building Energy Efficiency (BISE)
Project Contact, Chartered Institute of Building
Project Contact, China Green Building Council
Project Contact, Chongqing University (CQU), China
Project Contact, Chongqing Construction Engineering Group, China
Project Contact, Buro Happold Ltd
Project Contact, Shenzhen Institute of Building Research, China
Project Contact, Chongqing Commission of Urban-Rural Development, China
Project Contact, Chongqing Green Building Council, China
Project Contact, SPIE Limited (UK)
Project Contact, Hangzhou Municipal Construction and Development Co., Ltd, China
Project Contact, Skanska UK Ltd
Project Contact, Screenspace Productions Ltd
Project Contact, Shanghai Research Institute of Building Science (SRIBS), China
Project Contact, China-Britain Business Council
Project Contact, AECOM
Project Contact, China Southwest Architectural Design and Research Institute Corp. Ltd (CSWADI)
Project Contact, Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD), China

LoHCool focuses on topic T1 'Delivering economic and energy-efficient heating and cooling to city areas of different population densities and climates'. It confronts directly the conundrum of offering greater winter and summer comfort in a Continental climate zone whilst mitigating what would be a carbon penalty of prodigious proportions. It concentrates on recovering value from the existing building stock, some 3.4 Billion m2 in which dwell and work some 550 Million citizens. It is highly cross-disciplinary involving engineers, building scientists, atmospheric scientists, architects and behavioural researchers in China and UK measuring real performance in new and particularly in existing buildings in Chinese cities to investigate the use of passive and active systems within integrated design and re-engineering. It focuses on the very challenging dynamic within China's Hot Summer/Cold Winter HSCW climate zone. It aims to enable the much desired improvements in living conditions and comfort levels within buildings through developing a keen understanding of the current heating and cooling technologies and practices in buildings by monitoring, surveying and measuring people's comfort and capturing this understanding through developing systems modelling including energy simulations. It will borrow on UK research for comparative purposes, for example work examining the current and future environmental conditions within the whole National Health Service (NHS) Hospital Estate in England and the practical economic opportunities, very considerable, for significant improvement whilst saving carbon at the rate required by ambitious NHS targets. It will propose detailed practical and economic low and very low carbon options for re-engineering the dominant building types which we will identify in a series of cities, as developed with local stakeholders, contractors and building professionals, exploring economic and energy-efficient low carbon district heating and cooling systems. Finally, it will test them in the current climate, 'current' extreme events, future climates and will estimate the carbon implications and cost of widespread implementation. Findings for the existing stock will be equally applicable to new-build, in many ways a simpler prospect

10/11/15