EPSRC funds energy research

The grant, from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), covers the cost of a three-year project led by Prof 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 UCL-EI, UCL Mathematics and elsewhere.

Prof 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.

The project promises, for the first time, to link behaviour, the housing stock and the energy supply in dynamic, hourly demand-supply system models.

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.