The buildings we live in, work in, and shop in all contribute to the UK's carbon emissions. In fact, they account for more than 40% of the total national emissions. These emissions can be divided between operational and embodied emissions. The operational emissions are those related to running the building (e.g. heating, lighting) whereas the embodied emissions are those occurred in every activity necessary to extract and manufacture the raw materials, transport them on site, and assemble and maintain them up to the end of life disposal. Embodied carbon emissions have a peculiar characteristic: once they have been emitted in the atmosphere there is no way back. Any intervention, even if beneficial in the future, instantly provokes an increase of the embodied carbon. This is why embodied carbon is so important: we need to reduce embodied emissions now or we simply will not be able to do it in the future. The majority of the embodied emissions in buildings are often related to the building structure. This is because the structure generally takes up most of the building's total mass, and it is often made of materials that require a lot of energy (and therefore emit a lot of carbon) to be produced. It is therefore imperative to measure correctly the embodied carbon of building structures, in order to understand where the opportunities for carbon mitigation are and how to access the untapped reduction potential. The project will seek to answer the following questions: I. How do different materials affect the whole life carbon emissions of building structures? II. What are the whole life carbon emissions of building structures for different building types in the UK? This project will establish how different structural materials affect the whole life carbon emissions of building structures through rigorous numerical assessments across the main building types in the UK (i.e. residential, non-domestic). This shall move us away from the current 'sentimental' discourse over how green a material is to allow to choose the material with the lowest environmental impact over a building's life cycle for the specific project at hand. The aim is not therefore to promote one material over the others but rather to allow for informed decisions based on comparable assessments of the different materials by looking at the correct comparative unit, i.e. the building structure within a given building type. The project will collect primary data from industry where no robust information is available on the carbon emissions of the different materials across their whole life cycle, and will adopt stochastic modelling and uncertainty analysis to produce probability distributions of the likely carbon emissions. This will contribute to superseding the current deterministic mind-set, which results in single-value assessments that are of very little use. The findings will be published as guidance to architects and designers, planners and policy-makers, and in the professional press, as well as in academic papers.

We propose an End Use Energy Demand (EUED) Centre focused on Energy Epidemiology to be located at the multidisciplinary UCL Energy Institute (UCL-Energy), which undertakes research on energy demand and energy systems. Energy Epidemiology uses data and modelling to study energy use in the real world, with the aim of understanding the interactions of policy, technology, infrastructure, people and culture. The Centre for Energy Epidemiology (CEE) will: undertake primary data collection; advise on data collection; provide secure and ethical curation of a wealth of administrative, commercial and research data; link, develop and use innovative research methods; and support a structured research programme on energy demand intended to achieve a major reduction in UK carbon emissions. CEE will provide key research and policy insights at city, regional, national and international levels. It will support UK academics, policymakers and industry to research energy demand, by providing a cost-effective, secure and ethical bureau service for energy and related data. It will work closely with the new cross-government Energy Efficiency Deployment Office (EEDO) of DECC, the Energy Saving Trust, UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) and the new Open Data Institute (ODI) to marshal and maximise the value of existing and very large future sources of energy-related data ('big data'), ensuring the greatest impact for evidence-based energy demand research. The Centre will initiate and be a key player in an international network of energy epidemiologists, sharing research methods and undertaking cross-cultural comparisons of policies and technologies to reduce energy demand and to help the UK to meet its carbon targets. UCL-Energy: - has a clear focus on energy demand and its interaction with energy supply systems - this has been the core focus of UCL-Energy since its launch, with full UCL support, 35 months ago. - is multi- and interdisciplinary with lawyers, economists, social scientists, engineers, physicists, psychologists, architects, mathematicians and policy analysts co-located in open plan offices facilitating collaborative work. It has successfully worked with researchers from anthropology, English literature and history on energy demand problems. - makes an impact by supporting policy makers and industry to both set and achieve UK carbon targets. Examples of such support include the Green Deal, CCC budgets, smart meter rollout, and the development of products for reducing energy demand. UCL-Energy is the only university centre that has officially advised DECC's new EEDO, whose focus is squarely on EUED. - undertakes research of the highest quality; its staff were recognised as "world leading" by two successive EPSRC Platform Grant reviews. Roughly half its staff were submitted in the Built Environment UoA (30), for which UCL received the highest percentage (35%) of internationally leading staff (4*) in the UK. It holds the grant for the only Centre for Doctoral Training in energy demand. - is not sector-specific; it covers all energy uses and applies methods across sectors e.g. transport and buildings. - is managed as a coherent centre - this is facilitated by placing all staff under a single budget centre with a clear management structure. UCL-Energy is advised and guided by a prestigious International Advisory Board with CEOs and directors from leading companies around the world. - has leveraged a wide range of funding. From an initial UCL investment of £680k, it has so far raised £10m of external funding, including £2m from industry. - has strong leadership - its Director, Professor Tadj Oreszczyn has established a new academic department at UCL in less than 3 years, advises government at senior level, is on the boards of key organisations and has written several strategic papers on the future direction of energy demand research. - has critical mass and sustainability: UCL-Energy has 80 staff and PhD students