Buildings change in response to various social processes and emerge through the different practices and understandings of people who use, inhabit and work on them. Over time structures acquire a range of meanings as authentic embodiments of the past, including values attached to original fabric, period features, and the patina of worn and weathered materials. Such understandings are associated with cultural, social and economic values that lend support to the importance of conserving and caring for old buildings. However these ideas have the potential to conflict with an increasing emphasis on energy-efficient renovation, entailing a radical transformation of the built environment in response to fears about climate change. Concretely, a range of measures including the installation of micro-generation technologies, insulation, new windows and the adoption of 'smart' technologies, all have the potential to improve the energy performance of older buildings, but also to compromise the historic value of existing structures. This project examines how ideas about heritage conservation, a set of beliefs about the value of continuity and tradition, exist in relation to ideas about the need for environmentally motivated changes to a range of historic buildings. The project aims to understand the cultural meanings and social dynamics through which heritage and energy futures are constructed, through a study of the attitudes, values and beliefs of a range of building professionals and clients involved in renovation and retrofit. The project uses a mixture of methods, including interviewing and sustained detailed observation in relation to case-study buildings, combined with analysis of the broader discourses and cultural understandings that inform the positions of the professionals and clients involved. The findings will help understand how perceived conflicts between historic value and energy efficiency can be managed and will be used to shape policy and practice in an important but under-researched area.

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2018 highlighted the need for urgent, transformative change, on an unprecedented scale, if global warming is to be restricted to 1.5C. The challenge of reaching an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050 represents a huge technological, engineering, policy and societal challenge for the next 30 years. This is a huge challenge for the transport sector, which accounts for over a quarter of UK domestic greenhouse gas emissions and has a flat emissions profile over recent years. The DecarboN8 project will develop a new network of researchers, working closely with industry and government, capable of designing solutions which can be deployed rapidly and at scale. It will develop answers to questions such as: 1) How can different places be rapidly switched to electromobility for personal travel? How do decisions on the private fleet interact with the quite different decarbonisation strategies for heavy vehicles? This requires integrating understanding of the changing carbon impacts of these options with knowledge on how energy systems work and are regulated with the operational realities of transport systems and their regulatory environment; and 2) What is the right balance between infrastructure expansion, intelligent system management and demand management? Will the embodied carbon emissions of major new infrastructure offset gains from improved flows and could these be delivered in other ways through technology? If so, how quickly could this happen, what are the societal implications and how will this impact on the resilience of our systems? The answer to these questions is unlikely to the same everywhere in the UK but little attention is paid to where the answers might be different and why. Coupled with boundaries between local government areas, transport network providers (road and rail in particular) and service operators there is potential for a lack of joined up approaches and stranded investments in ineffective technologies. The DecarboN8 network is led by the eight most research intensive Universities across the North of England (Durham, Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield and York) who will work with local, regional and national stakeholders to create an integrated test and research environment across the North in which national and international researchers can study the decarbonisation challenge at these different scales. The DecarboN8 network is organised across four integrated research themes (carbon pathways, social acceptance and societal readiness, future transport fuels and fuelling, digitisation, demand and infrastructure). These themes form the structure for a series of twelve research workshops which will bring new research interests together to better understand the specific challenges of the transport sector and then to work together on integrating solutions. The approach will incorporate throughout an emphasis on working with real world problems in 'places' to develop knowledge which is situated in a range of contexts. £400k of research funding will be available for the development of new collaborations, particularly for early career researchers. We will distribute this in a fair, open and transparent manner to promote excellent research. The network will help develop a more integrated environment for the development, testing and rapid deployment of solutions through activities including identifying and classifying data sources, holding innovation translation events, policy discussion forums and major events to highlight the opportunities and innovations. The research will involve industry and government stakeholders and citizens throughout to ensure the research outcomes meet the ambitions of the network of accelerating the rapid decarbonisation of transport.

The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Renewable Energy Northeast Universities (ReNU) is driven by industry and market needs, which indicate unprecedented growth in renewable and distributed energy to 2050. This growth is underpinned by global demand for electricity which will outstrip growth in demand for other sources by more than two to one (The drivers of global energy demand growth to 2050, 2016, McKinsey). A significant part of this demand will arise from vast numbers of distributed, but interconnected devices (estimated to reach 40 billion by 2024) serving sectors such as healthcare (for ageing populations) and personal transport (for reduced carbon dioxide emission). The distinctive remit of ReNU therefore is to focus on materials innovations for small-to-medium scale energy conversion and storage technologies that are sustainable and highly scalable. ReNU will be delivered by Northumbria, Newcastle and Durham Universities, whose world-leading expertise and excellent links with industry in this area have been recognised by the recent award of the North East Centre for Energy Materials (NECEM, award number: EP/R021503/1). This research-focused programme will be highly complementary to ReNU which is a training-focused programme. A key strength of the ReNU consortium is the breadth of expertise across the energy sector, including: thin film and new materials; direct solar energy conversion; turbines for wind, wave and tidal energy; piezoelectric and thermoelectric devices; water splitting; CO2 valorisation; batteries and fuel cells. Working closely with a balanced portfolio of 36 partners that includes multinational companies, small and medium size enterprises and local Government organisations, the ReNU team has designed a compelling doctoral training programme which aims to engender entrepreneurial skills which will drive UK regional and national productivity in the area of Clean Growth, one of four Grand Challenges identified in the UK Government's recent Industrial Strategy. The same group of partners will also provide significant input to the ReNU in the form of industrial supervision, training for doctoral candidates and supervisors, and access to facilities and equipment. Success in renewable energy and sustainable distributed energy fundamentally requires a whole systems approach as well as understanding of political, social and technical contexts. ReNU's doctoral training is thus naturally suited to a cohort approach in which cross-fertilisation of knowledge and ideas is necessary and embedded. The training programme also aims to address broader challenges facing wider society including unconscious bias training and outreach to address diversity issues in science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects and industries. Furthermore, external professional accreditation will be sought for ReNU from the Institute of Physics, Royal Society of Chemistry and Institute of Engineering Technology, thus providing a starting point from which doctoral graduates will work towards "Chartered" status. The combination of an industry-driven doctoral training programme to meet identifiable market needs, strong industrial commitment through the provision of training, facilities and supervision, an established platform of research excellence in energy materials between the institutions and unique training opportunities that include internationalisation and professional accreditation, creates a transformative programme to drive forward UK innovation in renewable and sustainable distributed energy.

Decarbonising both heating and cooling across residential, business and industry sectors is fundamental to delivering the recently announced net-zero greenhouse gas emissions targets. Such a monumental change to this sector can only be delivered through the collective advancement of science, engineering and technology combined with prudent planning, demand management and effective policy. The aim of the proposed H+C Zero Network will be to facilitate this through funded workshops, conferences and secondments which in combination will enable researchers, technology developers, managers, policymakers and funders to come together to share their progress, new knowledge and experiences. It will also directly impact on this through a series of research funding calls which will offer seed funding to address key technical, economic, social, environmental and policy challenges. The proposed Network will focus on the following five themes which are essential for decarbonising heating and cooling effectively: Theme 1 Primary engineering technologies and systems for decarbonisation Theme 2 Underpinning technologies, materials, control, retrofit and infrastructure Theme 3 Future energy systems and economics Theme 4 Social impact and end users' perspectives Theme 5 Policy Support and leadership for the transition to net-zero

The key challenge addressed by the PEOPLE project is the skills mismatch between sociology, psychology and anthropology graduates across Europe and the requirements of the industry. This affects the job satisfaction and wages of graduates, while at the same time diminishing the productivity and innovative potential of companies. The situation is exacerbated by the failure of society at large and the business world in particular to understand how young people educated in the above-mentioned fields could contribute towards improving products, services and processes or by driving innovation in rapidly evolving technology areas. The qualification mismatch and relatively high unemployment rate of young graduates prevents countries from realising the full potential of their labour force and to some extent also leaves young graduates unfulfilled. At the core of the project is the idea that understanding people should become an indispensable part of industrial development processes, as a means to achieve practical-based education as well as new categories of products, services, or business strategies that truly address people’s needs and lead to sustainable innovation. The key innovative contribution of the PEOPLE project is the development and implementation of People-centred Learning Cycles (PLC) as a novel pedagogical approach and model. PLCs take a learner-centred and real problem-based teaching and learning approach, bringing together students, university educators, business professionals, and users/community members. These interdisciplinary teams work on actual business and societal challenges and jointly co-create and test new or improved solutions for challenging issues in the area of sustainable living and energy efficiency. These solutions are tailored to the needs of users and communities and lead to innovation in the business sector (in product, service, and/or process). PLCs are based on the following beyond state-of-the-art principles: (1) interdisciplinary and essentially collaborative: bringing together different disciplines and expertise, where engineering works hand in hand with social sciences and humanities. The key guiding principle is “dare to see things from other perspectives than your own”;(2) multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder: involving industry professionals, university teachers and representatives of civil society and non-governmental organizations;(3) people as co-creators: involved in all stages of product and service development process;(4) rooted in ethnography: as a methodology to collect, analyse and understand data and generate in-depth insights about peoples’ behaviours, practices, and needs; (5) in dialogue with theory and bringing up ethical considerations: understanding bigger contexts of emerging futures and world’s challenges.To ensure long-term sustainability of results and cooperation activities, the PEOPLE project has developed 5 key sustainability strategies:(1) Integration of PEOPLE learning cycle methodology in existing/new study programmes of university partners.(2) Implementing new PEOPLE case studies with existing or new partners on national/regional basis.(3) PEOPLE community and PEOPLE ambassadors.(4) Specialized trainings and consultancy on “How to make your own PEOPLE project”.(5) PEOPLE as part of larger initiatives to influence policy developments at national and European levels.