Energy and Buildings

More than 40% of the UK’s primary energy demand is related to buildings for heating, cooling, ventilation, lighting and powering electrical appliances. 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 the government’s target of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 80% of the 1990 value by 2050 is to be achieved since the annual building stock turnover is very low in the UK (~ 1% per annum). The potential for achieving step changes through refurbishment is high as a large number of existing buildings can be expected to face routine refurbishment within the next two decades.

PV facade leading to internal gain
Research update: What is Good Building Performance?

The question of how to qualify and quantify good building performance is not trivial to answer. A well performing building from a carbon footprint perspective may not automatically be well performing in terms of occupant satisfaction (Figure 1). Similarly building performance may be understood quite differently by different groups of building users as ‘performance’ can […]

Office thermal camera survey image
Research update: Environmental Control Facilities and User Interaction

The group’s research has highlighted that at present environmental control facilities are often not correctly applied, or more usually, incorrectly used due to their complexity or unintuitive mode of operation. It has been shown that there is often lack of interaction between users and their buildings. Façade interaction studies of an office building highlighted rather […]

Building envelope refurbishment
B-space: Building Specific Pre-refurbishment Assessment of Comfort and Energy

Within the framework of the IDCOP research project a pre-refurbishment tool for assessing buildings was developed (Figure 1). This tool which is termed B-space assesses the energy demand of multi-storey office buildings taking into account occupier comfort. B-space is targeted at asset mangers as main user group. It enables calculation of a building’s carbon footprint […]

graph of summer temperature in the South of the UK vs time
Research update: Climate Change Implications for the Urban Environment

Human-made emissions be it from buildings, business, agriculture or transport are now commonly accepted to be the main cause of the global warming trend which is currently being experienced. The Sustainable Energy Research Group is conducting research on climate change issues by assessing future climate impacts in particular in terms of the future performance of […]

Research update: Solar PV Systems at Highfield Campus, Southampton

The University of Southampton has three permanently grid connected PV systems on its Highfield Campus designed and serviced by the Sustainable Energy Research Group. The installed capacity of these three facilities is about 20 kWp: (a) George Thomas Building – 12.2 kWp atrium (b) Building 2 – 7.2 kWp vertical façade (c) Eustice Building – […]

Grant details: IDCOP

“Innovation in Design, Construction & Operation of Buildings for People” (IDCOP) is a multi institutional research programme funded under the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Sustainable Urban Environment (SUE) programme. The aim of the IDCOP consortium is to find new ways to improve the performance of building envelopes over the whole building life cycle. The […]