Foresight Sustainable Energy Management and the Built Environment Project

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Foresight Sustainable Energy Management and the
Built Environment Project

• FAN Club
• 24 April 2009

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Foresight Programme - Overview Jon Parke

• Team Leader, Foresight Projects Follow-up

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UK Foresight Programme - Aim -

• Strengthen strategic policy making by
  embedding a futures approach across government.
• By
• Understanding what futures might be possible
• Challenging presumptions
• Building a more robust approach to the future

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Foresight Projects
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Programme stakeholders
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Developing the future space
Scenario Development
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Powering our Lives Sustainable Energy Management
and the Built Environment Project

• Remit
• To explore how the UK built environment could
  evolve to manage the transition over the next 5
  decades - to secure, sustainable, low carbon
  energy systems that meet the needs of society,
  the requirements of the economy and the
  expectations of individuals.

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Dr Jim Watson

• Director of the Sussex Energy Group
• Deputy leader, Tyndall Centre climate change and
  energy programme

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Background

• First signalled in the Energy Review, 2006
• SEMBE is the first comprehensive, futures
  examination of energy systems in the UK built
  environment over the next 50 years
• Project time-frame roughly coincides with the
  80 emissions reduction by 2050 target outlined
  in the Climate Change Act
• SEMBE launched on 26 November 2008 (the same
  day that the Climate Change Act passed into law)

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Evidence base

• Around 60 peer-reviewed, State of Science
  papers, published in a Special Issue of Energy
  Policy Journal (vol. 36, issue 12)
• Project participation by approximately 200
  experts
• Report written by a lead expert team of eight
  scientific experts
• Foresight scenarios visualising informed
  future narratives to make current policies more
  robust and resilient to change

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Future scenarios
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• Energy systems in the built environment and how
  they can be used to meet emission reduction
  targets

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Energy Scales and Lock-in

• Centralisation and Lock-in
• Energy Systems at Many Scales
• Overcoming Lock-in
• Security and Resilience
• Changing Energy Behaviours

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Centralisation and Lock-in

• The UK energy system is highly centralised it
  has been successful in delivering affordable
  energy services to the majority of people.
• In principle, UK policy goals could be achieved
  within this centralised system.
• But lock-in to this system makes attainment of
  ambitious targets for emissions reduction and
  renewables expansion more difficult.
• Lock-in is a multidimensional phenomenon,
  combining technologies, institutions, regulations
  and behaviours in particular patterns.

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Energy Systems at Many Scales
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Overcoming Lock-in

• Key role for networks for heat, electricity,
  carbon dioxide, information technology
• Open up the system by fostering innovation,
  e.g.
• Local energy system experiments
• Decentralise governance (e.g. to local
  authorities)
• Changed guidance to the energy regulator
• Evaluation frameworks also need to change
  Short term economic optimisation is not
  appropriate for large-scale transitions

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Security and Resilience

• Many relevant threats to security
• Energy security including domestic threats
• Climate change impacts on built environments
• Vulnerability of some social groups to fuel
  poverty
• Security is system property it cannot be
  solved by single technologies
• The built environment can improve energy system
  resilience and reduce vulnerability
• Decentralisation could add to diversity, but
  innovation required to deal with complexity

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Changing Energy Behaviours

• People have not responded to energy prices and
  have not implemented energy efficiency measures
  at the scale and pace needed to meet emission
  targets.
• The report suggests it is sometimes unhelpful
  to use energy consumption as a proxy for carbon
  emissions when trying to encourage behaviour
  change.
• A bold move would be to make the carbon cost of
  energy use visible through high energy prices,
  and would require additional policies to deal
  with the impacts on people on lower incomes.
• Another method to encourage behaviour change
  would be further investment in the IT systems
  which would allow smart meters to be truly smart,
  and make energy use more transparent.
• It would allow customers to alter usage based
  on price or when greener forms of energy were
  available.

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• How the built environment could be used to shift
  UK society to low carbon systems over the next 50
  years

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Main themes for the built environment

• New Build
• Retrofitting
• Construction Industry
• Changing Behaviours
• Leading by Example

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New Build

• Targets have been set for all new house
  building to be zero carbon by 2016 all
  non-domestic building by 2019.
• There are concerns over whether standards are
  being implemented, enforced and monitored.
• Even if building standards are met, evidence
  shows that occupier behaviour can be a stronger
  determinant of energy use than building design.

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Retrofitting

• Almost 70 of the buildings that will exist in
  2050 have already been built, so renewal and
  retrofitting, which can change efficiency
  dramatically, are important.
• There needs to be more investment in RD for
  new technologies to make retrofitting easier, but
  also less expensive.
• Current take up of existing policies has been
  low, but area based initiatives could promote
  involvement and share the cost of investment.
• It will be necessary to involve firms,
  communities and individuals to ensure
  retrofitting technologies are adopted by all.

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Construction Industry

• New commercial models need to be established
  these could include the construction and
  development sector retaining a stake in the
  operational life of a development.
• An improvement in the skills and capacity of
  the construction sector is needed in the short
  term market forces should address this in the
  medium term.

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Changing Behaviours

• The Report highlights that how we behave in
  homes and other buildings is as important in
  determining energy use and the details of
  building design.
• There is potential to introduce frequent,
  possibly annual assessments of a buildings
  energy performance linked to minimum allowable
  standards (akin to a vehicle MOT) in order to
  promote change and to make people more regularly
  aware of building efficiency.
• Green leases for commercial buildings could
  be linked to real-time energy data from smart
  meters.

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Leading by Example

• The public sector has an important role to play
  as a major construction client, owner of estates
  and building occupier.
• To capitalise on this there is a need to
  overcome fear of failure and negative auditing,
  and to implement strong leadership.

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Foresights Sustainable Energy Management and
the Built Environment (SEMBE) Projectwww.foresigh
t.gov.uk