The overarching goal of this project is to innovate the design of interactive visualisations and sensing for environmental change, reorienting them beyond their current use as levers of individual persuasion, towards an extended role as technologies that can link behaviour change and sustainability policy. The link aims to be bidirectional: on one hand helping people in relating existing climate change and energy policies to everyday life; on the other empowering them in influencing and engaging with policy making by generating an enhanced understanding of their own everyday practices. While there is certainly merit in using digital technology interventions to try and persuade individuals to act sustainably, it is also clear that the large-scale changes needed to tackle the climate emergency require policy interventions, beyond promoting individual action. We believe that there is vast untapped potential for digital technology to catalyse engagement with environmental sustainability policies. This project puts forward the ambition to realize such potential, and the vision of transforming the role of digital technology in relation to behaviour change for environmental sustainability. The work will target in particular practices and policies related to the built environment, in a variety of domestic and non-domestic buildings, and with policy contexts ranging from organization-focused change (e.g. temperature policy in office buildings) to policies focused on increasing the use of renewable energy (e.g. by enabling collective self-consumption of rooftop solar or demand shifting within household or community settings). Such a multi-domain approach is enabled by the involvement of four different user partners, who recognize the relevance of the proposed project and will facilitate research deployments across the private (Fosters + Partners), non-profit (Carbon Coop; Repowering) and higher education (UCL) sectors. Moreover, strategic advice by project partner Arup will further broaden the scope and impact of our work (see also letters of support). The project will leverage network-connected sensor nodes and displays, generally considered part of the Internet of Things (IoT). The research will follow a user-centred approach, involving the iterative development of robust, fully functional "high fidelity" IoT interactive prototypes and their evaluation in-the-wild through research methods from the social sciences, thanks to the close collaboration of our multi-disciplinary research team. Moreover, the project puts forward a novel participatory prototyping research approach: by combining ethnographic and user-centred design methodologies we will involve (some of the) participants not only in the design, but also in the technical development of interactive visualization and sensing prototypes. In parallel with more traditional researcher-led user-centred design and prototyping, hands-on workshops (such as 'hackathons') and online engagement activities will play a pivotal role in the research plan strengthening links between community interests and visualization design. These activities will leverage strong existing research relationships with communities along with the abundance of easy to use open source interactive tools and software libraries, and widely available hardware. This approach is designed to actively increase the social and environmental sustainability of the research process: promoting the community ownership of the open source prototypes developed throughout the project will prevent them from becoming unmaintainable e-waste once the research funding ends. Moreover, this approach will also maximize impact. The participatory prototyping activities will target multiple age groups, including teenagers, offering them STEM skills learning opportunities. Our collaboration with community-based partners will help us to reach under-represented groups particularly from BAME communities

Human energy consumption and its direct link to global climate change is among the most defining and challenging issues of our time. The original Material Cultures of Energy project (MCE, conducted in 2014-2017) examined how copiously consumed energy transformed daily life during the 20th century. The MCE project successfully revealed that consumers have shaped the diverse patterns of energy consumption in accordance with distinctively local, regional and national energy cultures. This follow-on project will build on the successes of MCE and its intervention into today's energy issues by directly engaging with the process of communicating energy-related knowledge and information. This approach presents a unique opportunity for arts and humanities research to directly influence professional practices that have important bearings on energy users' behaviour, knowledge and attitude. This project will explore methods for improving communication about energy-related information and knowledge to the public. The project will mobilise the MCE project's legacy assets and engage with a new community of stakeholders: 'energy communicators' such as museum curators; public relations and communication officers in business, government offices, NGOs, community energy groups. By collaborating with the key mediators of energy-related information, the project seeks to deliver the original project's research findings-in the broader context of today's energy communication-to stakeholders and the public effectively and immediately. Simultaneously, the project aims to benefit communication experts by creating new collaborative partnerships and a network of research institutions, the cultural industry and the energy sector. Using public museums of the Science Museum Group as the main site of dialogue and public events, the project will conduct five interrelated activities to address the Five Challenges for Energy Communication: Challenge 1. Object-based communication Challenge 2. Behavioural intervention Challenge 3. Visual media communication Challenge 4. Participatory communication Challenge 5. Community engagement These challenges form the bases of the project's five activities that are designed to foster a multidisciplinary dialogue, co-creation process and cross-fertilisation of expertise in the field of energy communication. The five activities and their main objectives are as follows: - Five Challenges Knowledge Exchange Sessions will create a sustained dialogue within the core project group, a multidisciplinary group of energy communicators working in research and practice. - The project's public events at regional science festivals will combine the insights from both the MCE project and the follow-on KE sessions in a tangible form. - An Energy Communication Conference will be organised to expand the project's scope, incorporating a wider community of communication experts within and outside of the UK. - The Energy Communication Network will perpetuate a close working relationship among energy communicators by establishing an online-based professional network and hub of information. The network will operate via the project website and is expected to continue beyond the life of the project. - The Energy Communication Toolkit will make available the collective knowledge and insights of energy communicators in an open-access format, intended as a reference and as learning material for communication experts and students. Our project partners represent diverse areas of energy communication, including the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), the Behavioural Insights Team, the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem), the Community Energy England and the Carbon Co-op. By working closely with these partners, the follow-on project is expected to activate a dialogue across different fields of energy communication in a concerted effort to tackle major challenges for energy communication.

This project is associated with the EPSRC Solar Energy Hub. It sets out the scientific, technical and socio-economic grand challenge of wide scale integration of photovoltaic systems (PV) into electric power systems with particular focus on the UK. This challenge is interdisciplinary and the research required to address it requires a range of interdisciplinary skills. The academic team comprises internationally recognised experts in electrical power systems, social sciences, environmental and techno-economic assessment, PV materials and devices from the Universities of Manchester, Sheffield, Loughborough and Oxford Brookes. Solar PV plays a modest role in the UK Pathways to 2050 articulated by DECC. Although the Government's feed-in tariff programme has led to a total PV installed capacity (for up to 50kW installations) exceeding 1.2GW, equivalent to 1.6% of the total installed generation capacity in Great Britain, its current trend falls short from the DECC trajectories. To enhance the role of PV this research examines the UK electricity system of 2050, including generation sources and networks, in which solar PV is assumed to play a significant role. It aims to investigate the drivers and opportunities to facilitate an increase in the role of solar energy in the UK energy futures. It will develop a range of future energy scenarios out to 2050. The energy scenarios will be informed and driven by PV stakeholders' (customers, developers, policy advisors, material scientists) perceptions and perspectives of solar PV as a serious player in energy supply in the UK. The proposal also has a wider interest in solar PV on a global scale with particular focus on the role that UK industry could play in providing innovative PV technologies to lead global uptake of solar PV. In the move to decarbonise electricity supply globally, it is likely that more and more reliance will have to be placed on renewable energy sources, with solar PV playing a major role. Harnessing this ubiquitous resource in a manner that ensures it delivers carbon savings in a cost-effective and efficient manner remains one of the key challenges to its widespread adoption as a serious contender in global energy supply. This project will evaluate with key stakeholders their vision of the "PV future", and via the construction of potential future PV scenarios, will result in a comparative analysis of the impacts and benefits of these futures, taking into account: (i) The greenhouse gas savings and wider environmental impacts of the PV implementation (ii) Life cycle assessment of costs of implementation from the perspective of different stakeholders such as utilities, government, users (iii) The infrastructure and energy systems implications of implementation (iv) The socio-economic impacts of implementation, including on fuel poverty, job creation etc We propose the investigation and articulation of the changes in power system design and operation to accommodate wide scale penetration of PV. This project aims to maximize the contribution of PV to UK renewable energy and carbon reduction targets by strategically assessing the systems level challenges that are encountered with adventurous levels of PV penetration in the UK energy system. The expertise of the group will evaluate the challenges: (i) for the electrical system (ii) for material/resource availability (iii) of cost reduction (iv) of maximizing life-cycle carbon reductions (v) of delivering social benefits The work will therefore go beyond the idea of optimizing to make solar energy more cost competitive; considering instead the whole-life cycle sustainability (economic, environmental and social) of different PV options, how they could be accommodated in the evolving UK energy system and identifying relevant barriers and obstacles at an early stage. This requires engagement with scientists in the hub, DNO's, regulators and manufacturers, but also with existing and potential PV users.