Climate change is a problem that threatens the world and is caused by the release of greenhouse gas emissions, such as Carbon Dioxide from burning fuels like gas and oil. Our dwellings in the UK consume 30% of the country's total energy demand and so that we can reduce the environmental impact of our lifestyles and create greater energy security by consuming less, the UK Government has laid out a road map of measures that will deliver a zero carbon (or as close as possible) housing stock by 2050, affecting all homes in the UK.A key step on the way to 2050 is the installation of so-called 'smart-meters', which the Government has decided will be rolled out to every house in the UK by 2030. These meters will deliver much greater information to both energy providers and householders. These meters will mean more accurate and transparent billing and should stimulate a more competitive energy market, which would benefit consumers. This greater level of information about how we use energy in and around the home can help us understand where we are wasteful and can tolerate a reduction in consumption and when and where changing our habits and/or lifestyle is not acceptable.What is not understood fully is the relationship between the householder and their preferences and tolerances to change and the sorts of pressures and constraints placed on the energy providers for energy production. Today we enjoy the luxury of having as much energy as we want on demand 24hours a day, but increased reliance on renewable sources, such as wind turbines, combined with a need to reduce our consumption as a nation is likely to mean that more flexible supply and generation systems will become more common and this will have implications for how we use energy in the home. We need to find new ways to help us understand how and where we can reduce our consumption without unacceptable impact on our lifestyles. One way to do this is by understanding how everyday practices in the home (including the use of digital media) result in the consumption of energy and how these practices may change in the future because of societal trends ( e.g. the aging population, remote working, broadband in every home) and then to see how this information can offer opportunities to develop products and services that are attractive to the householder and that have a real impact on energy consumption in the home.The challenges are both technological and sociological and so this research brings together academic experts in the fields of social science, user interface design, product design, building modelling and energy consumption, systems engineering and computer science with householders, energy providers and business to focus on the issue of using digital technology for reducing energy demand in the home. This team contends that in order to develop ways in which householders can reduce their energy consumption significantly, with relatively little effort on their part, the needs of the user must be understood in the wider context of a changing energy landscape and that this can lead to the development of new ideas that can be developed into business opportunities that benefit the UK economy.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

This research proposal aims to investigate, develop, and evaluate mobile solutions to reduce teenage energy use. It actively involves teenagers in the project as design informants, evaluators and researchers.Taking on the Teenagers - Using Adolescent Energy to Reduce Energy Use is a three-year project that aims to investigate the use of digital technology to change the domestic energy-use behaviour of teenagers. The underlying research hypothesis is that teenagers can, if instructed and informed about their energy use in an appropriate way, be instrumental in changing not only their own behaviours but also in changing the behaviours of those around them . Research questions that arise from this hypothesis are How can teenagers be best informed and instructed? How are appropriate technologies for teenagers designed? and How can behaviour change be measured and evaluated? These questions will be answered during the research work. The project will deliver digital products; designed to be cool and interesting to the teenagers, one is aimed at the younger teens, one at the older segment - and both will go through two iterations of design and evaluation. The project will show how use of these products, and associated web based materials change the attitudes and behaviours of teenagers, especially with respect to use of electrical appliances in the home. Using a mixture of participatory design methods, expert design methods and learner-centred design methods, the team will create products that operate in three ways - they will educate teenagers about energy use (by the use of specially created content and methods), they will inform teenagers about energy use (by the use of power-use data from metered devices in the home that is transmitted wirelessly to the product and displayed in a meaningful way) and they will empower teenagers about energy use (by allowing teenagers to enter and submit their own data about energy use and their own stories and blogs about energy use). The products that will be delivered will use web-based technology, mobile phone technology and wireless sensor technology. In addition to the technical products, the project will also deliver a validated and well understood method for measuring changes in teenage behaviour and a framework for developing instructional / informative material of this kind, as well as an understanding of teenager attitudes and a collection of stories and reports that provide a rich qualitative source of information for scientists.The project is unique in that it will actively engage with teenagers throughout the work. In an early stage of the project a story-gathering web-portal will be used to find out the opinions of teenagers about energy use. This 'blog' will continue throughout the lifetime of the project and will allow researchers to investigate changing attitudes. Teenagers will work closely with the design teams to add their designs and ideas to the intended products and will then be engaged in evaluating and testing the products as they are built. Workshops will be held with teenagers to develop learner materials that will be directly fed into the products that are being developed and also populate an accompanying web site. In the last phase of the project, 40 teenagers will be invited to a research summer school where they will be instructed in research skills and will then work with the academics in gathering and interpreting data from the field trials of the products that have been built during the earlier phases.Throughout the project the emphasis is on the applicability of the lessons learned to the general energy debate. Regular workshops will take place with industry representatives, and an industrial advisory board will be formed. At the end of the project the team will deliver a dataset to industry that shows the habits, attitudes and behaviours of teenagers and provides, for the industry, a unique view on teenage energy habits.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Please see lead proposal - Linked to EP/I000720/1 joint reference is K114503