Category Archives: built environment

Energising our lives – a WES 100 Violets Challenge project – the continuing story

built environment, carbon emissions, EDI, Energy Systems, integrated energy systems, Net Zero, STEM outreach, Transport

Engineering is key to find answers to the challenges we face today! From the climate emergency to the medical and humanitarian response to the global pandemic, collaborating engineers are playing a significant role in developing solutions.

Newcastle University researchers, Dr. Jannetta Steyn and Laura Brown have worked together on a WES 100 Violets Public Engagement Challenge project, to illustrate the solutions and ideas engineers are applying to the global need for clean and affordable energy and integrating technology to improve the quality of our every life.

About WES

The Women’s Engineering Society (WES) is a charity and a professional network of women engineers, scientists and technologists offering inspiration, support and professional development. Working in partnership, it supports and inspires women to achieve as engineers, scientists and as leaders; they encourage the education of engineering; and support companies with gender diversity and inclusion.

About WES 100 Violets Challenge

The Women’s Engineering Society’s (WES) 100 Violets Challenge competition was part of their centenary celebrations in 2020. The aim was to design and build an engaging museum exhibit that celebrates and showcases engineering/research and shares it with the public. The challenge is supported by the Ingenious Grant program from the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Building the exhibit

Please see our first blog post to find out more background about the project idea. https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/cesi/2021/01/29/wes-100violets-part1/

More Technical Details about the project can be found in a series of blogs developed by Jannetta at her personal blog site: – brainwaves.jannetta.com

The aim of the exhibit was to showcase electrical, software, computing, mechanical, building, transport and energy engineering. So no pressure then.

The Energy System Integration Vision

About the Project Team: Dr Jannetta Steyn

Jannetta is a Research Software Engineer at the Digital Institute, Newcastle University. As an experienced researcher and software engineer she has a background in data analysis, provenance and middleware programming. Jannetta does a large amount of outreach work, primarily in STEM, running a range of coding clubs and electronics clubs.

Contact:- Jannetta.Steyn@newcastle.ac.uk

http://brainwaves.jannetta.com/

About the Project Team: Laura Brown

Laura is the Centre Manager, EPSRC National Centre for Energy Systems Integration and Energy Research Programme Manager, Newcastle University. Her research tackles the challenges of integration of state-of-the-art thinking and technology into legacy and future energy systems. Laura sits on the Tees and Tyne Regional Cluster Committee of the Women’s Engineering Society and is the group leader of the SDG7 subgroup of the WES Climate Emergency Group.

Contact:- laura.brown11@newcastle.ac.uk

Our first outing

By way of practice for the WES 100Violets Exhibition planned for April 2020, we were lucky enough to be offered a chance to “trial” the exhibit at the opening event of the Gateshead Library Makerspace. We were delighted that the training we have been given by WES had come in very useful, particularly the risk assessment guidance. This meant we had planned carefully the storage requirements, labeling and cable routes for the equipment for our exhibit.

Jannetta writing some code for the IoT with a young helper adjusting our Lego Engineers

The event went well but underlined what we suspected:- KIDS LOVE LEGO. It proved to be a popular exhibit. And, while it might have been the draw of the remote control car (with its own garage), the Bluetooth controlled train or the eye-catching rotating wind turbine, all of the young people we spoke with left knowing just a little bit more than they did about renewable energy and role of women in engineering and computing.

So how do these technologies work in real life?

Part of the purpose of the exhibit was to provide educational information on the energy system. So we had been working on a number of learning resources that we thought might help engage the visitors to the exhibition. We had planned to have ‘make your own’ wind mill; colouring sheets; spot the energy competitions and possibly a 3D printing demo session.

It was all looking good but then as the date for the main event drew near, the impact of the pandemic was starting to reach home. The organisers took the difficult but inevitable decision to postpone the exhibition.

How does a wind turbine produce electricity? https://archive.epa.gov/climatechange/kids/solutions/technologies/wind.html
  1. As the wind blows over the blades of a wind turbine, it causes the blades to lift and rotate.
  2. The rotating blades turn a shaft that is connected to a generator.
  3. The generator creates electricity as it turns.

Some great STEM resources out there to explain energy

As part of our research we found some very useful STEM resources that we would highly recommend for anyone looking to understand more about their own energy system.

  1. BBC Bitesize – Humans and the Environment https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zp22pv4
  2. NASA’s Climate Kids https://climatekids.nasa.gov/menu/energy/
  3. CALTECHs Energy STEM resources https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/learn/tag/search/Energy

So what now

While cancelling the event was most definitely the right thing to do, all the groups from the WES competition were disappointed. Lockdown meant our team couldn’t even get onto campus to check our equipment and work further on the exhibit. Everything paused.

When the North East of England partially removed the lockdown in the summer, Jannetta collected all the components of the exhibit to have at home. So after the most recent national lockdown and encouraged by Dr Jo Douglas-Harris, the WES Tees and Tyne Cluster Chair, we looked for alternative ways to ‘tell the story’ of the project and share the vision. The new aim: let’s try to exhibit virtually. A new challenge for us both.

So for the last month of so, in our rare moments of spare time and in our evenings, we have put together some materials and collated the reflections and learning from the project in two blogs (this one and that one (https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/cesi/2021/01/29/wes-100violets-part1/)). And we are going to trial exhibiting virtually via a livestream on CESI’s YouTube Channel.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcKtJZLFUsCXYGuJ62evBkA

The EPSRC National Centre for Energy System Integration (CESI) YouTube Channel

Event Details

Image

And we’ve got an accompanying YouTube video too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_slWTm_zEhI

We look forward to hearing what you think.

Energising our lives – a WES 100 Violets Challenge project – the 1st part of the story

built environment, EDI, Energy Systems, Net Zero, STEM outreach, Transport, , ,

Engineering is key to find answers to the challenges we face today! From the climate emergency to the medical and humanitarian response to the global pandemic, collaborating engineers are playing a significant role in developing solutions.

Newcastle University researchers, Dr. Jannetta Steyn and Laura Brown have worked together on a WES 100 Violets Public Engagement Challenge project, to illustrate the solutions and ideas engineers are applying to the global need for clean and affordable energy and integrating technology to improve the quality of our every life.

About WES

The Women’s Engineering Society (WES) is a charity and a professional network of women engineers, scientists and technologists offering inspiration, support and professional development. Working in partnership, it supports and inspires women to achieve as engineers, scientists and as leaders; they encourage the education of engineering; and support companies with gender diversity and inclusion.

About WES 100 Violets Challenge

The Women’s Engineering Society’s (WES) 100 Violets Challenge competition was part of their centenary celebrations in 2020. The aim was to design and build an engaging museum exhibit that celebrates and showcases engineering/research and shares it with the public. The challenge is supported by the Ingenious Grant program from the Royal Academy of Engineering.

The exhibit idea

The aim of the exhibit was to showcase electrical, software, computing, mechanical, building and energy engineering. The Public would be able to interact with the exhibit to provide an insight into how things work and what is involved in developing the technologies that make our way of life possible without impacting the planet.

Essentially the team would be building a model of a typical house but integrated with some of the established and emerging engineering and computer science innovations that are providing a route to sustainable living.

The building model was inspired by a family history project carried out by Dr. Steyn of a house that was built by her ancestors in South Africa in 1850 in the Cape Province.

  • The prototype was designed using Inkscape
  • A lasercutter was used to cut it from 3mm Birch plywood
  • The thatch roof used coconut fibre and the ridge was cut strips from a hanging flower basket lining

The final model was informed by the research being carried out at the EPSRC National Centre for Energy System Integration (CESI) which both project team members participate in. CESI is investigating the value in taking an energy systems integration approach to the future energy system and evaluating the security, economic and environmental costs of the future energy and transport scenarios being considered for the UK.

More Technical Details about the project can be found in a series of blogs developed by Jannetta at her personal blog site: – brainwaves.jannetta.com

About the Project Team: Dr Jannetta Steyn

Jannetta is a Research Software Engineer at the Digital Institute, Newcastle University. As an experienced researcher and software engineer she has a background in data analysis, provenance and middleware programming. Jannetta does a large amount of outreach work, primarily in STEM, running a range of coding clubs and electronics clubs.

Contact:- Jannetta.Steyn@newcastle.ac.uk

http://brainwaves.jannetta.com/

About the Project Team: Laura Brown

Laura is the Centre Manager, EPSRC National Centre for Energy Systems Integration and Energy Research Programme Manager, Newcastle University. Her research tackles the challenges of integration of state-of-the-art thinking and technology into legacy and future energy systems. Laura sits on the Tees and Tyne Regional Cluster Committee of the Women’s Engineering Society and is the group leader of the SDG7 subgroup of the WES Climate Emergency Group.

Contact:- laura.brown11@newcastle.ac.uk

Elements within the project

Training and Early Engagement

To help give us expertise the tricky art of public engagement and science communication, the WES 100 Violets Challenge Group organised two expert training sessions from a wonderful team of Science Communicator experts from Science Made Simple. The trainers gave us top tips on body language, communication tools and invalable guidance on the Health and Safety considerations of planning a public exhibit. We also got the chance to meet the other winners of the 100Violets Challenge and hear about their inventive ideas.

And to practice our new science communications skills, we organised an event with the students and staff of the School of Engineering at Newcastle University. As part of our exhibit were some elements of lego energy systems, we thought the students (and staff) would have fun helping us construct the model. And for extra measure, we borrowed some resources from our colleagues at Open Lab to allow some free lego building. The event was great fun and I’m pleased our research confirmed our hypothesis – engineers love playing with lego !!! What do you think of the results?

Community build with the Engineering students from Newcastle University

Gender Equality in Engineering

We aren’t sure who coined the phrase, “if you can’t see it, you can’t be it” as a rallying call to have positive role models from all sections of society in all walks of life but we felt even in this relatively light-hearted project there was some evidence of gender bias in the system. When we procured the rather fabulous lego wind turbine we were somewhat crestfallen when the two technicians were both males! That error was quickly fixed by some immediate head swaps. We then used this as a theme in the model that all the roles in the exhibit tableau would be engineers – a non-gendered noun.

The end of the beginning

By this time the model was starting to take shape. (More technical details can be found in a series of blogs developed by Jannetta blog site: – brainwaves.jannetta.com ).

  1. We had a date in the calendar for the big WES 100 Violets Exhibition
  2. We had procured all the parts of the model and constructed all the lego components
  3. 3D printing and Laser Cutting of the House was going well
  4. The IoT Smart Home was beginning to take shape
  5. The EV had been built and was (remotely) operational
  6. We had developed some engaging learning materials to accompany our exhibit
  7. Science Made Simple team had helped us perfect our Exhibition Pitch for our intended audience
  8. We had our first engagement event with the students (guinea pigs) completed and it had went well
  9. Our fabulous colleague Faye Harland had provided an amazing schematic of our planned model (See below)
  10. We had another local exhibition planned …
  11. It was February 2020 … it was all in hand … what could possibly go wrong …

… we suspect you can guess but we will provide some more of the story next week in our next blog. To be continued …

The visualisation of our idea. Artist: Faye Harland, Newcastle University

Getting it done? The UK 2020 Budget and the support for a net-zero transition in the energy sector.

built environment, carbon emissions, Centre Introduction, Economics, energy bills, Energy Systems, Heat, Net Zero, smartgrid, , ,

About the authors:

Dr Sara Walker is Reader in Energy at Newcastle University and Director of Newcastle University Centre for Energy.

Professor David Flynn is Professor of Smart Systems at Heriot Watt University

Both Sara and David are Associate Directors of the EPSRC National Centre for Energy Systems Integration, a £20m collaborative research programme with industry and government investigating the social, ecconomic and technical value in energy systems integration.

March 2020 Budget

On 11th March 2020, the Chancellor Rishi Sunak presented to Parliament the Government budget¹. This was an opportunity for the UK Government to clearly signal its commitment to deliver on the net-zero greenhouse gas emissions target for 2050 and to also lay the groundwork for COP26 as the host nation.

Albeit the language of the previous administration associated with “industrial strategy” was dropped, the Government retained a reference to the Grand Challenges, indicating that there is likely to be continued investment into energy innovation and climate change mitigation. A key indication of this is the commitment to at least double investment in the Energy Innovation Programme.

Firstly

The first mention of issues related to energy in the Chancellor’s speech came with an announcement to continue the freeze on fuel duty. For comment on this, and other transport initiatives in the Budget, we refer you to DecarboN8’s review². In a separate announcement, Business Secretary Alok Sharma previously confirmed a £36.7 million investment to design, test and manufacture electric machines. £30 million will be used to create a national network cutting-edge centers led from Newcastle University – based in Newport, Nottingham, Strathclyde, and Sunderland – to research and develop green electric machines including planes, ships, and cars. This represents the “demonstrator” element of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund Driving the Electric Revolution Challenge.

And then …

The second mention of energy came in an announcement, as part of the Research and Development (R&D) spend, of £900m funding for nuclear fusion, space, and electric vehicles. As employees of research organizations, we welcome the announcement of £22bn per year by 2024-25, in research and development. However, the role of new nuclear in the Committee on Climate Change Net Zero technical report³ is relatively minor.
On housing, the Budget refers to £12.2bn for the Affordable Homes Programme over 5 years, a push for 300,000 new homes per year, and reforms to planning to accelerate development. No commitment is made to the standard of new homesª, or retrofit of existing homes, which is inconsistent with the Committee on Climate Change Net Zero report, which found that high levels of energy efficiency are needed to get close to the zero targets.

What does this mean for energy sector? 

There is a clear need to improve the quality of UK homes, in a way that reduces energy use and moves us towards heating systems that use lower-carbon fuels. We need to make urgent changes in this area, from research to improve the performance of individual technology like heat pumps, to understanding possible future housing performance and the energy needs associated with that. The EPSRC National Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI) is looking at these types of research challenges.

The meat of the Budget from an energy perspective is in the Budget report section on “Growing a greener economy”. There is an announcement to double the size of the Energy Innovation Programme as mentioned previously, although some of this money is for R&D and therefore likely to be included in the figures above. A further £800m was announced by the Chancellor for the development of two Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) sites through the creation of a CCS Infrastructure Fund. CCS support was removed by previous administrations but is integral to many scenarios within the Committee on Climate Change Net Zero report.

No figures are mentioned, but the Budget report includes a new support scheme for biomethane funded by a Green Gas Levy, and a Low Carbon Heat Support Scheme to enable the installation of biomass boilers and heat pumps. £270m is promised to enable new and existing heat networks to adopt low carbon heat sources, to follow on from funding of £97m for the final year of the Heat Networks Investment Project (HNIP). There is a rise in the Climate Change Levy on gas (for 2022-23 and 2023-24). The Renewable Heat Incentive is extended to 31st March 2022. Furthermore, £10m in 2020-21 is to support the design and delivery of net zero policies and programs. Heat networks are an area of research for the EPSRC National Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI), and we also expect to investigate more scenarios with hydrogen and CCS now that the goal for the UK has changed from 80% to a net-zero target.

And Finally

Given the critical interdependencies of our energy infrastructure to other vital services e.g. water, transport, services from public buildings, we also see opportunities to accelerate and distribute the efforts in decarbonisation by utilising the opportunities of the Making the most of Government knowledge assets initiative. The public sector holds around £150 billion of knowledge assets (intellectual property, tech, data, etc.), which is vital in shaping the operation and planning of decarbonised services. However, the absence of any Budget support for solar, wind, and storage – elements seen as vital with renewable generation four times current levels in some Committee on Climate Change scenarios – is of great concern. As is the lack of investment to decarbonise the building stock.

Getting it done isn’t the same as getting it right. And for the UK energy sector, there is very little in the budget which gives confidence that we are doing enough, let alone doing it well.

References

  1. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/budget-speech-2020
  2. https://decarbon8.org.uk/budget-2020-transport-we-cant-build-our-way-out-of-the-climate-challenge/ with for example: £403m for the Plug-In Car Grant; £129.5m to extend the scheme to vans, taxis and motorcycles; Vehicle Excise Duty exemption; £500m over 5 years to roll out rapid charging; removing red diesel tax relief; £304m for NOx reduction; freeze of fuel duty; £20m midlands rail hub; £5bn for new buses and cycling; £500m pothole fund; all dwarfed by the £27bn between 2020 and 2025 for road investment. Aviation is also mentioned with regards regional connectivity.
  3. https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Net-Zero-Technical-report-CCC.pdf

ªhttps://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/871799/Budget_2020_Web_Accessible_Complete.pdf “2.95 Future Homes Standard – The government is committed to reducing emissions from homes and to helping keep household energy costs low now and in the future. In due course, the government will announce plans to improve the standards of new built homes.”

Building physics within an integrated energy system

built environment, Energy Storage, Energy Systems

Mohammad Royapoor and Michael Barclay discuss two presentations made at this year’s UK Energy Storage Conference (UKES2018).  Both presentations highlight the importance of building physics in an integrated energy system

About the authors

Dr Mohammad Royapoor is Research Associate in the School of Engineering at Newcastle University.  A chartered engineer, he has been involved in academia and industry working on the design and optimisation of heating, ventilation and air conditioning services (HVAC) and building fabric since 2003.  His work concerns various aspects of building physics, modelling and energy reduction, building retrofit options and occupant
perception of comfort.

Contact: mohammad.royapoor@newcastle.ac.uk                                 Profile details

Dr Michael Barclay is Architectural Officer in the College of Engineering at Swansea University.  He has academic expertise in building physics and computer simulation and is a member of the research team on a project progressing the concept of Buildings as Power Stations (SPECIFIC), which is looking into addressing the challenge of low carbon electricity and heat by enabling buildings to generate, store and release their own energy, in one system, using only the energy from the sun.

Disciplines such as structural and soil mechanics, advanced materials and construction techniques, renewables and digitalisation have been able to heavily influence modern building design and attract large research resources over the past two decades. More recently, building physics – generally somewhat a dormant science in early 2000s – has been pushed into the forefront of innovation. This is because the interaction between internal mass within well-insulated (and adaptive) envelopes can enable internal zone thermal equilibrium, reduce building peak demands and overheating risks, offer demand side response (DSR) capability and enable owner and operators to use their building as an asset that can offer arbitrage and flexibility to energy suppliers.

The link between two UKES 2018 presentations highlighted the role of building physics as a core component of integrated energy systems research.  The first was the work led by Dr Michael Barclay. He provided an overview of his work into experimentation, modelling and validation of the heat flow in solids.

Temperature change from heat injected into ball-bearings

Fig 1: Temperature change resulting from heat injected into ball-bearings using Transient line source probe [1]

The significance of fundamental research such as this is that it offers building analysts the ability to parameterise mathematical models of complex buildings with validated real-world values. Considerable uncertainty exists in the characteristics of heat transfer in building elements and as a result modelling building energy consumption can carry significant errors [2]. Therefore a more detailed understanding and appropriate characterisation of heat flow in building materials allows much greater prediction accuracy and therefore more appropriate techno-economic appraisals for buildings and indeed the broader integrated energy systems.

The second was a report on Building as a Power Plant project led by Dr Sara Walker, Director of Expertise at Newcastle University’s School of Engineering and Associate Director of the EPSRC National Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI). Using Urban Sciences Building (home to the University’s flagship School of Computing and to CESI) as a case-study, the research team is examining the extent to which the building is able to provide DSR to the local electricity network by operating its HVAC, lighting and several other non-critical loads in a more dynamic manner without compromising occupant comfort. Early stage findings points to the possibility of 32 – 35% of the total electrical load of the building being available at any time for DSR at short or no notice (Fig 2).  The integrated nature of UK energy is a reflection of the interconnectivity of our physical world. Investigating the flow of heat in a small tube of ball-bearings enables greater model precision at building level which in turn can inform future control philosophes of a secure, flexible and low carbon electricity network.

Sankey diagram of the energy flows of the USB

Fig 2: A Sankey diagram of energy flow with sub-categories of electrical demand (LHS) in the USB building (RHS) [3]

References

[1] Barclay, M; Feng, Y. T; Perisoglou, E: Experimental and Numerical Investigations of Discrete Heat Storage Materials, UKES 2018 Conference presentation, Newcastle University.
[2]  M. Mirsadeghi, D. Cóstola, B. Blocken, J.L.M. Hensen, Review of external convective heat transfer coefficient models in building energy simulation programs: Implementation and uncertainty, Applied Thermal Engineering, Volume 56, Issues 1–2, 2013, Pages 134-151, ISSN 1359-4311
[3] Royapoor, M; Davison, P; Patsios, H; Walker, S: Building as a Power Plant, UKES 2018 Conference presentation, Newcastle University.

 

The role of the building engineer within the development of energy systems – Dr David Jenkins

built environment, carbon emissions, Domestic, Energy Systems

National Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI) Co-Investigator, Dr. David Jenkins, is a research specialist in sustainable buildings.  In this week’s blog, he discusses how buildings can be considered in future energy systems and how his CESI research is shaping this consideration.

About the Author

Dr David Jenkins is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Sustainable Building Design at Heriot-Watt University. He has over 70 publications in the area of low- energy buildings, energy policy, and climate change adaptation. He has worked on a number of EPSRC projects concerned with the energy use of the built environment, such as Tarbase,  Low Carbon Futures, ARIES and CESI and has contributed to a number of reports in these areas for UK and Scottish Governments. He is currently PI of the CEDRI project, looking to apply community energy analyses to case studies in India.

Contact details:- d.p.jenkins@hw.ac.uk  Profile Details

The built environment has always been of great importance in any discussion of carbon saving targets in the UK. 13% of UK carbon emissions emanate from heating/cooking in residential buildings alone[1]. 29% of emissions are linked to “energy supply” (including electricity supply to the built environment), with other sectors (e.g. “business” at 17% and “industrial processes” at 3%) also having energy consumption that is heavily linked to the built environment. Therefore, as we map out our future energy systems (gas/electricity grids and other energy pathways) we must have an understanding of the evolving energy demand characteristics of the diverse range of buildings that we occupy.

A practitioner with a particularly good understanding of this detail, the building engineer, often has their professional boundaries drawn around the building itself. Therefore, the sizing of a boiler, assessment of general building performance, and choices related to low-carbon design are not always placed in the context of other important factors within the energy supply chain.

Whilst this focus is to some extent defendable – the challenges of low-carbon building design are, in themselves, considerable – it does run the risk that crucial knowledge of building performance is not reflected in energy system modelling. This is particularly true when we investigate the steep vectors of change facing our energy systems in the coming decades. Coincident changes in climate, technologies, fuels, and operation, provide a landscape of uncertainty that must be consistently reflected in projections of every aspect of our energy system: supply, infrastructure/distribution, storage, and demand. For example, a future projection assuming the continued existence of an established mains gas grid for heating homes is not necessarily consistent with the installation of several million heat pumps for residential heating. The latter change should, therefore, be accompanied by an assumption on the supply-side that the gas grid will either be reduced in scale or used for something else. Policy in these different areas must also be similarly synergistic.

The building modeller is crucial to our understanding of energy demand but, with energy systems (e.g. National Grid) involving multiple actors from different disciplines, a key challenge is to provide guidance and future projections that are translated into different discipline-specific vernaculars. Integration across the disciplines must be reflected in modelling approaches, policy-making frameworks, and outputs. The CESI project, where novel modelling techniques are being used to explore the effect of future buildings on national energy systems, sees this as a key challenge in producing actionable guidance to a range of practitioners.

Another issue that often dissuades the traditional building modeller/engineer from interacting with wider energy system analysis is “scale”. Modelling a building is quite different to modelling buildings. Capturing the energy demand characteristics of a community of buildings (e.g. such as might be served by a substation) requires an understanding of the diversity of energy use. A “spikey” electrical demand profile of a single dwelling (showing kettle’s boiling and toasters toasting) is quite different to that of a 200-dwelling profile, where different behaviours and activities are summated together in a smoother profile. Likewise, asking a building engineer to consider the aggregated demand profile of, say, 200 gas boilers working at slightly different schedules is a step change from a detailed hourly profile of a single boiler. Yet this level of detail is particularly valuable when we consider what might happen to energy demand at specific times in the future. Will electric heat pumps create national electrical demand profiles that are more difficult to meet for energy suppliers? Or are such changes perfectly manageable providing storage and management solutions are utilised at the correct point in the network? And what happens if millions of people wish to home-charge their electric vehicles at similar times in the evening? What does a new residential electrical demand profile now look like for the UK? This, therefore, does not just require an understanding of scale, but also that of temporal resolution; daily averages of energy use will not indicate where and when such problems might be manifest, and what their solutions might be.

The future building engineer will be required to build on existing core skills to reflect the above context. Changes to energy supply (such as carbon intensity) will, ultimately, alter our assumptions of “good” and “bad” technologies for the built environment. Conversely, technological and behavioural change in the built environment will change our assumptions on how to supply that energy efficiently. This co-evolution of change across sectors is central to CESI and encapsulates the challenge to, but also the value of, multi-disciplinary energy system modeling.

[1] 2015 UK GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS, FINAL FIGURES, 7th Feb 2017 https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/604350/2015_Final_Emissions_statistics.pdf