As most buildings are not designed for optimum energy use, there is significant potential to reduce the country’s carbon dioxide emissions. The challenge lies in encouraging the construction industry to carry out energy-conscious refurbishment as well as making energy users aware of their behaviour. This is vital if we are to achieve the government target of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 80% of the 1990 value by 2050. However, the potential for achieving step changes, through refurbishment, is high as many existing buildings will face routine refurbishment within the next two decades.
Some of our Research focuses on commercial buildings and their performance, in particular the impacts of different façade systems and structures on energy consumption and indoor comfort. Extensive data monitoring of environmental conditions inside various offices and surveys of users have highlighted problems with overheating in summer. However, the studies also showed that responsive design, good building management and staff knowledge of how the systems work can make a significant difference to a building’s performance... Read more
Creating sustainable cities is a far more complex issue than refurbishing existing or constructing new buildings according to high environmental standards. Buildings only represent one aspect within the urban environment that contributes to the city's carbon footprint. A sustainable city concept needs to address further aspects such as transport, population density, building density, resource flows (food, materials, waste, energy and water), green spaces, spatial relations (working, living, leisure & recreation) and basic climatic conditions... Read more
Meet the team
