Reducing carbon emissions and securing energy supplies are crucial international goals to which energy demand reduction must make a major contribution. On a national level, demand reduction, deployment of new and renewable energy technologies, and decarbonisation of the energy supply are essential if the UK is to meet its legally binding carbon reduction targets. As a result, this area is an important theme within the EPSRC's strategic plan, but one that suffers from historical underinvestment and a serious shortage of appropriately skilled researchers. Major energy demand reductions are required within the working lifetime of Doctoral Training Centre (DTC) graduates, i.e. by 2050. Students will thus have to be capable of identifying and undertaking research that will have an impact within their 35 year post-doctoral career. The challenges will be exacerbated as our population ages, as climate change advances and as fuel prices rise: successful demand reduction requires both detailed technical knowledge and multi-disciplinary skills. The DTC will therefore span the interfaces between traditional disciplines to develop a training programme that teaches the context and process-bound problems of technology deployment, along with the communication and leadership skills needed to initiate real change within the tight time scale required. It will be jointly operated by University College London (UCL) and Loughborough University (LU); two world-class centres of energy research. Through the cross-faculty Energy Institute at UCL and Sustainability Research School at LU, over 80 academics have been identified who are able and willing to supervise DTC students. These experts span the full range of necessary disciplines from science and engineering to ergonomics and design, psychology and sociology through to economics and politics. The reputation of the universities will enable them to attract the very best students to this research area.The DTC will begin with a 1 year joint MRes programme followed by a 3 year PhD programme including a placement abroad and the opportunity for each DTC student to employ an undergraduate intern to assist them. Students will be trained in communication methods and alternative forms of public engagement. They will thus understand the energy challenges faced by the UK, appreciate the international energy landscape, develop people-management and communication skills, and so acquire the competence to make a tangible impact. An annual colloquium will be the focal point of the DTC year acting as a show-case and major mechanism for connection to the wider stakeholder community.The DTC will be led by internationally eminent academics (Prof Robert Lowe, Director, and Prof Kevin J Lomas, Deputy Director), together they have over 50 years of experience in this sector. They will be supported by a management structure headed by an Advisory Board chaired by Pascal Terrien, Director of the European Centre and Laboratories for Energy Efficiency Research and responsible for the Demand Reduction programme of the UK Energy Technology Institute. This will help secure the international, industrial and UK research linkages of the DTC.Students will receive a stipend that is competitive with other DTCs in the energy arena and, for work in certain areas, further enhancement from industrial sponsors. They will have a personal annual research allowance, an excellent research environment and access to resources. Both Universities are committed to energy research at the highest level, and each has invested over 3.2M in academic appointments, infrastructure development and other support, specifically to the energy demand reduction area. Each university will match the EPSRC funded studentships one-for-one, with funding from other sources. This DTC will therefore train at least 100 students over its 8 year life.

Schools are planning to re-open in September and with the recent increased awareness of airborne transmission of Covid-19, there is an urgent need to monitor the situation and to provide guidance on ventilation best practice. This is emphasised by the expected onset of cooler weather when there will be a conflict between maintaining high fresh air ventilation flows and energy consumption and occupant comfort. We will quantify the risk of airborne COVID-19 transmission in schools and evaluate the effectiveness of mitigation measures, by developing techniques to assess the absolute risk of infection in a given indoor space, using field studies in primary and secondary schools, complemented by laboratory experiments and CFD to elucidate the flow patterns responsible for airborne transport. The understanding generated will underpin recent developments in infection modelling to predict the likelihood of airborne transmission within schools. The project will reduce the uncertainties associated with airborne transmission routes and provide evidence to evaluate mitigation measures. The scenarios we will investigate include changes to ventilation, use of screens, classroom lay-out and occupancy profiles. The methodology will facilitate application to offices, restaurants, shops etc. Airborne infection occurs through re-breathed air, the concentration of which can be directly inferred from measurements of CO2. Indoor flow is strongly affected by the locations of windows or vents, the heat rising from occupants/equipment and disturbances caused by people movement. Thus, accurate representations of these processes in the laboratory and CFD are needed to interpret the monitoring data currently collected in schools, which are typically single point measurements.

This project will develop sound methods for future climate change data for building designers to use for new buildings and refurbishments, most of which will last to the end of this century. The outputs will primarily be: academic papers and a draft for a Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers, CIBSE, Technical Memorandum, suitable for practising designers; case studies to validate the new weather data design methodology and assess the potential adaptation of new and refurbished buildings to reduce carbon emissions. This TM will also be useful for CIBSE to use to determine a consistent future weather design methodology and future data for its new Design Guide, which is the fundamental document used by Building Services Engineers for designing buildings and their services. It is a supporting document for the Government's Building Regulations. The basis for this CIBSE data will be the new UK Climate Impacts Programme, UKCIP, future scenarios due in 2008, UKCIP08, with probabilities of various future weather outcomes for this century.To ensure that the new, probabilistic outputs will be useful to professionals, and to reflect best practice in design, there will be strong stakeholder involvement through the formation of a Stakeholders Group, via CIBSE, (Weather Task Force and collaborating consultancies), the Manchester-led EPSRC SCORCHIO project, (looking at urban heat island and climate change vulnerability, with contacts to UKCIP and the Tyndall Centre), architects and software houses. Policy makers will be reached via the Stakeholder Group Corresponding Members linked to the Department for Communities and Local Government and their contractors, including BRE. Risk levels will be assessed and data provided to enable designers to use the data with confidence. This bottom-up approach will serve to inform policy makers of what can be achieved practically. In addition there will be numerous case studies for validating the new methodology andTo provide this consistency, a novel method will be developed which will allow UKCIP08 scenarios and probabilistic weather data to be the basis of design which takes into account coincident weather parameters, e.g. solar radiation, air temperature, wind speed and direction. It is known that solar and air temperature have profound and sometimes differing influences on the comfort and carbon emissions of the building and that design values in the Guide are not necessarily coincident. Thus the hottest summer (or summer day) may well not be the sunniest summer (or day). New building design indices will be developed, with the aid of the current building designs contributed by members of the Stakeholder Group and collaborators. Solar radiation data, not covered in detail in the HadRM3 and UKCIP02 models, will be developed to satisfy designers' requirements. Likewise wind data, although the confidence level will be lower. It will be crucial to include wind data since wind drives natural ventilation. Rainfall duration and quantity are also important in the building design process because of drainage and rain penetration damage and designers' requirements will again be reviewed.Urban heat island effects, (where the urban areas are often hotter than the nearby rural areas), briefly mentioned in the present Guide, will be developed from the EPSRC SCORCHIO work to provide more realistic urban weather data. Local modification or downscaling will also be applied to generate data for other sites in the UK. This will enable the new Guide to cover more than the current 14 sites for which data were developed by Manchester for CIBSE

Meeting pressing carbon emission reduction targets successfully will require a major shift in the performance of buildings. The complexity of the building stock, the importance of buildings in people's lives, and the wide spectrum of agents responsible all make buildings an important area of 'policy resistance'. Policies may fail to achieve their intended objective, or even worsen desired outcomes, because of limitations in our understanding of the building stock as a dynamically complex system. This limitation can lead to 'unintended consequences' across a range of outcomes. The concept of the 'performance gap' with regards to the energy performance of buildings is now well established and useful work to begin to understand this challenging issue has been undertaken. However, potential unintended consequences related to the inter-linked issues of energy/Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) present an even greater and more complex challenge - a challenge that is gaining increasing importance in the UK and China. There are exciting opportunities to address this issue of 'total performance' in order to reduce the energy demand and carbon emissions of buildings whilst safeguarding productivity and health. Our work will begin by examining the contrasting context within which buildings have been designed and constructed and within which they are used and operated internationally. We will address the policies and regulatory regimes that relate to energy/IEQ but also the assessment techniques used and the ways that buildings are utilised. We will then build on this analysis by undertaking an initial monitoring campaign in both countries to allow comparisons between the performance of the same types of building in the two different contexts. We will evaluate how energy/IEQ performance varies between building type and country. This work will enable the assembly of a unique database relating to the interlinked performance gaps. This initial monitoring work will also allow us to identify the most suitable buildings for the next stage of the work that will integrate monitoring and modelling approaches. This phase of the work will develop semi-automated building assessment methods, technologies and tools to enable rapid characterisation of probable pathologies to determine the most cost-effective route to remedy the underlying root causes of energy/IEQ underperformance. Energy/IEQ issues do not form a closed system however. In the development of relevant policies and regulations, it is vital to consider the wider system and we propose a second stream of work to address this. The team at UCL has undertaken pilot work within the housing sector as part of the EPSRC funded Platform Grant ('The unintended consequences of decarbonising the built environment'). We successfully employed a participatory system dynamics approach with a team of over 50 stakeholders and we will extend that work here to other building typologies. Such an approach can help support decision-making in complex systems, addressing challenges central to the TOP work. The proposed work is tremendously challenging and exciting. If successful it will lead the way in understanding and improving the total performance of low carbon buildings and help to develop relevant effective policies and regulations in the transition towards future Low Carbon Cities. Tsinghua and UCL have the suitable complementary world-leading expertise to undertake this work and form a long-term 'best with best' academic collaboration. The Bartlett at UCL is rated first in terms of research 'power' and environment in the UK; the Tsinghua University School of Architecture was ranked first in China in the National Assessment on Architecture in 2003, 2008, and 2011. The groups in both countries have extensive stakeholder networks and the outputs of the project will thus be communicated widely and appropriately.

This project will develop sound methods for future climate change data for building designers to use for new buildings and refurbishments that could last to the end of this century. The principal application output will be a draft Technical Memorandum (TM) for the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers, CIBSE, suitable for practising designers. This will be supported by extensive case studies to validate the new weather data design methodology and be used in research tasks described later. 'Story lines' relevant to different scenarios for the climate and built environment will be developed as well as risk levels in building design to enable designers to use the weather data with confidence. The TM will provide CIBSE with a consistent methodology for the selection and use of future data for its new Design Guide, a fundamental document used by designers of buildings and their services and a supporting document for the Government's Building Regulations. The basis for this project will be the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) future scenarios to be published in 2008 (UKCIP08) from which may be derived probabilities of different weather outcomes over this century. Academic outputs will include an extensive assessment of the carbon reduction potential of active and passive systems and designs for new and refurbished buildings. They will utilise case studies with PC simulation of the building and systems, employing the new probabilistic weather data. These assessments will provide designers and policy makers with guidelines to help reduce the growth in greenhouse gases (GHGs) from buildings, which at present contribute about 50% of the UK emissions. Other academic outputs will provide the theoretical basis underlying the proposed consistent PC-based and manual design methodology with coincident, probabilistic future weather data parameters such as solar radiation, air temperature, wind speed and direction. It is known that solar radiation and air temperature have peak values at different times and on different days but current design methods do necessarily separate them so that over-design often occurs. A related academic output will be a theory underpinning the selection of the proposed new Design Reference Year (DRY) which will facilitate building design (including passive and active heating and cooling systems and comfort assessment) with simulation on a PC. The DRY will replace the currently unsatisfactory Design Summer Year. Solar radiation data, not covered in detail in the HadRM3 and UKCIP02 models, will be developed to satisfy designers' requirements. Likewise wind data (crucial to include since wind drives natural ventilation) although the confidence level will be lower. Rainfall duration and quantity are also important in the building design process because of drainage and rain penetration damage and designers' requirements will again be reviewed.'Urban heat island' effects (urban areas are often hotter than the nearby rural areas), briefly mentioned in the present Guide, will be incorporated in the new data, developing on SCORCHIO work to provide more realistic urban weather data. Local modification or downscaling will also be applied to generate data for other sites in the UK. This will enable the new Guide to cover more than the current 14 sites for which data were developed by Manchester for CIBSE.To ensure that the new, probabilistic outputs will be useful to professionals, and to reflect best practice in design, there will be strong stakeholder involvement through the formation of a Stakeholders Group, including Corresponding Members, which will include CIBSE, architects and software houses and housebuilders. Policy interests will be reached via the Department for Communities and Local Government, and DEFRA and their contractors, such as BRE. There will be links to the Manchester-led EPSRC SCORCHIO urban heat island and climate change project, UKCIP and the Tyndall Centre.