To enable the UK to meet legally binding carbon targets and establish a resilient and secure energy system, the coming decades need to see an historic transition: the almost complete decarbonisation of energy supply, the development of a new heat supply system and the comprehensive refurbishment of the housing stock.Key elements in this transition include: - A shift to a largely-electric heat supply system, based on a decarbonised grid reliant on less controllable sources of generation such as wind and nuclear. This will produce considerable pressure on suppliers to better understand and control demand.- Significant increases in energy price, either as a result of policy or of market forces, which without other interventions will significantly increase levels of fuel poverty. Shifts to more capital intensive forms of generation will move the focus of energy bills from quarterly energy to peak power demand. Diversity, which depends on the variability of the timing of peak demands for individual households, will be a crucial factor in sizing and operating energy systems. - Large-scale renovation aimed at significantly reducing heat loss of dwellings. This will both require and induce profound impacts in occupant behaviour which need to be understood.To manage this transition successfully we must rapidly achieve a better understanding of the interplay between human factors (social, economic, behavioural), new technologies for dwellings, and new sources of energy. Existing models of energy-using behaviour do not capture the variability of energy using behaviours, instead relying on averages. Recent work has begun to reveal profound differences between different groups of occupants for example in their tendency to take benefits of energy efficiency improvements as higher comfort rather than a reduction in energy demand (take-back). Unless these differences are made explicit in models, policies and investment decisions are likely to be targeted inappropriately. This is likely to be compounded by use of models of the housing stock that provide only the crudest insight into the temporal variation of demand and none into the hourly interplay of demand and supply that will be critical to the cost-effective management of large tranches of renewable and nuclear generation. It is clear that new tools and approaches are needed.This proposal aims to develop such tools by bringing together an international multi-disciplinary team of social scientists, building scientists and energy systems modellers who will work within a collaborative interdisciplinary analysis, evaluation and interpretation framework and draw on new sources of data to build novel and ambitious, dynamic demand-supply models. This is a combination rarely before applied to this sector and never at this scale.From this work, we anticipate the following innovations: 1. New insights into the complexity and variability of energy consuming behaviour based on newly available data sets and novel analytical approaches. 2. Development of new models making it possible for the first time to coherently link behaviour, the built stock and the energy supply in dynamic, hourly demand-supply system models.3. Development of strategic scenarios drawing out the insights from the models and making explicit their practical implications and application, through an interdisciplinary process of critical analysis, evaluation and interpretation.All of this will enable us to address the following questions. How are internal temperatures changing? How do energy efficiency improvements in houses and occupant behaviour interact? What is the real impact of take-back? How can the UK minimise the combined costs of renovating the housing stock and renewing energy supply systems? How should this affect government policy, the business strategies of energy supply companies and those involved in the management and renovation of dwellings?

Energy use in existing housing is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions in all developed countries. These emissions need to be reduced significantly and rapidly over the next 40 years to meet international targets and to help stabilise the climate, and therefore low carbon refurbishment of existing housing needs to play a key role. The technologies that might be used are broadly understood, but many are only deployed at very low levels compared to their future potential, and the technologies are not as familiar to building-related professions as they will need to become. These professionals have a strong influence over decisions about what work gets done, and so they have a major role in tackling climate change.The role of social science in this area of energy research has focussed largely to date on the behaviour of owners and occupiers of housing. Yet, the large number of housing-related trades and professions all play a role, both in implementing technical change and influencing owners and occupiers. Our research will address the implications of low carbon refurbishment for the relevant professions (architects, surveyors, engineers, estate agents, builders etc.), and their role in promoting and/or resisting change. The questions we will be investigating include: How might different professions react to the threats and opportunities implied by low carbon refurbishment? How might the need for low carbon refurbishment change the roles and interactions of professions? How are existing professions developing to meet the challenge? Which professions will gain control over the new activities involved in low carbon refurbishment? Or will new professions be needed to carry out new roles? If so, what are these roles and how will this shift influence other professions? Does the level of skills and knowledge required imply the professionalization of some roles currently seen as trades? How do the relevant institutions (trade associations, training organizations, professional bodies) view this issue and how are they preparing for it?To address these questions we will draw on two broad areas of existing knowledge - research in socio-technical systems (the process of technical innovation and associated social change) and the theory of systems of professions (which has studied the interaction of professions). Our goal is to bring the insights of the two approaches together to address the issues of professional interaction in meeting the challenge of low carbon refurbishment.We will conduct interviews with past and current innovators in this field, as well as surveying a broader range of 'mainstream' housing professionals. We will study decisions in ongoing innovative projects to understand decision making processes. And we will interview a broader range of stakeholders, including policy makers, professional organisations and trainers, to get an understanding of their attitudes and the institutional framework within which change might occur. We will do this work in both the UK and France, in order to draw comparisons and to understand the similarities and differences, and therefore help inform conclusions about the role of existing cultures and institutions.Our main findings will be academic reports, papers and conference presentations. However, we expect the results will be directly useful to both policy-makers and built environment professionals. We will engage with these groups both in the course of the research and to disseminate the final results. We will therefore present our research findings at conferences, events and in trade journals, and maintain a dedicated website to make our research accessible. We will organize final seminars for policy-makers to highlight the lessons learned from the research.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

This project will inform and influence the need for and use of microgeneration technology (MGT) in new build houses. The research is highly relevant and timely as the UK government has set a target that all new houses must be zero-carbon by 2016 and that the use of MGTs will be needed to meet this target. The widespread introduction and use of MGTs will have significant implications. For energy providers, MGTs will move the balance away from centralised energy generation and distribution towards a decentralised model. MGTs will enable end-users to generate electricity for their own use with any surplus being sold to the grid company. In addition, the installation of MGTs has been found to significantly shift end-users awareness, attitudes and behaviour towards improved energy efficiency. For MGT manufacturers and installers, the substantial increase in demand will expand the MGT market and offer new business opportunities and challenges. Finally, for housing developers, the integration of MGTs will require radical innovation in their business strategies, supply chain management, design and production. The successful diffusion of MGTs in the new build housing sector will therefore need multi-level changes across institutional, supply chain and end-user actors. The uptake of MGTs so far has been extremely small. Research to date on the barriers to MGT diffusion has pursued a limited 'technology push' perspective. This perspective has generally ignored the critical social and market dynamics which shape (and are shaped by) the development and use of MGTs. The proposed research adopts a socio-technical network analysis approach which is needed to properly understand the conditions and processes which facilitate (or hinder) the creation and solidification of appropriate supply chains and end-user strategies and practices. These conditions and processes will vary from country to country. Lessons and good practice may therefore be identified and shared through cross-country comparisons. The programme of work in the project involves three principal streams of integrated activity. First, six UK housing development case studies will be undertaken which will investigate the MGTs employed in particular developments. Housing development case studies will be produced and, from the fieldwork, three key MGTs used in new build housing will be identified. Second, these prioritised MGTs will be the focus of three UK MGT case studies which will concentrate on the particular MGTs and associated manufacture(s). The work will result in MGT case study reports and an analytical framework to allow comparisons between MGTs and between national institutional contexts. Third, the analytical framework will be used to conduct a comparison between France and the UK. EDF researchers will conductthe fieldwork in France. The comparison will allow the integration of cross-national data and comparative institutional analysis of the effect of national conditions on variations in the socio-technical networks supporting the design and deployment of MGTs. The project will benefit from having the following as industrial partners: the National House Building Council Foundation, the Home Builders Federation and the British Electrotechnical and Allied Manufacturers Association. The partners are highly regarded in their sectors and their views are sought by government as the 'representative voice' of the industry. The academic project team from the EPSRC funded Innovative Manufacturing Research Centres at the University of Reading and the University of Salford has a proven track record in leading and managing successful collaborative funded projects. Further, the academic team has the multi-disciplinary expertise required for the project: the delivery of sustainable housing; new product development in high technology sectors; procurement and supply chain management; and, socio-technical network analysis.

This proposal seeks funding for a three year research programme into the inspection of buried structures using guided waves. The scientific basis for the use of guided waves to inspect structures such as pipelines, railway lines, plates and pipes has been developed successfully now for about 2 decades, led in particular by researchers in the UK. The new understanding has been taken up in industry, so far concentrating with great success on the inspection of pipelines. However, critically, the enabling scientific research was done for exposed structures, but guided waves in buried structures are radically different. The surrounding materials, which typically include sound-absorbing protective coatings, reduce the practical range of inspection and often give rise to unwanted components of signals which hinder interpretation. These limitations are becoming very apparent in industry where there is a huge attraction to apply the guided wave method to inspect buried parts of pipelines which are otherwise inaccessible. The proposed research will address these problems, aiming to provide the scientific basis for the reliable inspection of buried and coated pipes over maximum distances. The outcomes will have generic benefit also for the guided wave inspection of any other kinds of buried or coated structures. The proposal is being submitted within the UK Research Centre in Non Destructive Evaluation (RCNDE) to the targeted research programme, the funding for which is earmarked by EPSRC for industrially driven research.