UCL-led team to develop new model of energy consumption

A UCL-led team of researchers has won a grant worth more than £850,000 to develop a new model of energy consumption. The grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council covers the cost of a three-year project led by Tadj Oreszczyn, Director of the UCL Energy Institute (UCL-EI). The project will involve a multidisciplinary team of social scientists, building scientists and energy system modellers from the UCL-EI, UCL Mathematics, and elsewhere. Professor Oreszczyn and his colleagues hope to develop a model of energy consumption that links building and occupant diversity with occupant behaviour. Recent studies have revealed profound differences in energy use between different groups of occupants - a variability that existing models fail to capture. This project promises for the first time to link behaviour, the housing stock and the energy supply in dynamic, hourly demand-supply system models. The researchers will also seek to answer a number of key questions, including: Understanding how, when and why we consume energy is becoming increasingly important as government and industry plan and implement the decarbonisation of the country's housing stock, a key step in the move toward a low-carbon world.