FORESIGHT SUSTAINABLE ENERGY MANAGEMENT AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT PROJECT: REPORT OF SCOPING WORKSHOPS
Introduction
The Foresight Sustainable Energy Management and the Built Environment Project was announced in the Energy Challenge (DTI, July 2006). As part of the scoping phase activities, Foresight held three workshops, at the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, London in November 2006. The workshops brought together a diverse group of experts and invited them to offer their views on what the project scope might be. Over a hundred experts, from business, government, academia and the voluntary sector, participated in the workshops.
Exploring the central project question
At all the workshops the participants were invited, through group work, to suggest possible central questions that the project should address. Some examples of questions that offered the greatest breadth of scope and strategic thinking were:
- How can we deliver a sustainable built environment which sources, manages and delivers energy, minimising carbon emissions and maximising resource efficiency, while delivering the level of service (quality, comfort, reliability, security) required to maintain economic growth and quality of life?
- How do we develop the UK built environment over the next 5 decades to meet people's energy needs and expectations via sustainable and cost-effective energy services (within the EU and wider international context)?
- In the context of behavioural change caused by technological advance, communication and limited resources, what are the socio-economic technological, regulatory and infrastructure requirements on Sustainable Energy and the Built Environment to meet societal needs 10, 20, 50 years in the future?
It is interesting to note from these questions the relationship between energy, the built environment, the economy and people and how they are viewed as highly interdependent. These suggested questions have helped us to define the central project question:
'To explore how the UK built environment could evolve to help manage the transition over the next five decades to secure, sustainable, low carbon energy systems that meet the needs of society, the requirements of the economy, and the expectation of individuals.'
What factors might drive change?
In order to understand how current and future developments in science, technology and society might impact on sustainable energy management and the built environment, participants were invited to suggest factors that would drive change in this area. These factors were then grouped under relevant generic headings or 'clusters'. In total, fifty three clusters of driving factors were created from the outputs of the three workshops.
Nearly half of these clusters related to social factors, such as attitudes to energy management and consumption and shifting patterns of population. Approximately one fifth of the clusters were political and related mainly to the need to develop an international response to the challenges posed by global warming and energy, and the need for strong political leadership in the UK to ensure that behaviours change. Technological clusters mainly referred to the availability and deployment of technology fixes to improve sustainable energy use. Economic clusters focused on the increase in fuel prices, the cost of global warming and new business models. Environmental clusters focused on the urban form and existing building stock.
Emerging views from the workshops' participants
Eleven themes were identified about where the project's scope might lie based on the participants emerging views. These are described in Table 1, together with some of the participants' suggestions of the topic areas that the Foresight project should include in its programme of work. The themes reflect the linkages between people, energy, the built environment and the economy.
Table 1: Emerging views from the workshop participants and suggestions of topics for review
| Emerging views from the workshop participants | Participants' suggestions of topics for review include: |
|---|
| society's willingness to invest in the future: as people get wealthier, their expectations about comfort and well-being rise. Current systems of energy (and other) consumption are no longer sustainable. It is not, however, clear whether people are willing to voluntarily change their behaviours, even though their understanding of the need is growing. | - Understanding more about how society makes big decisions when it really matters
- Exploring how to deliver behavioural change when it is not wanted/not attractive or is expensive
- Examining how to improve the chance of policy succeeding by modelling the variety of responses that might kick in
|
| public education and engagement: people need to be better informed about the need for sustainable energy management and about their responsibilities. Engagement and understanding is an essential component of changing and making the right policy (and personal) choices. | - Examining what novel communication channels could be used.
- Exploring what the new aspirations and values could be for the post-energy age.
- Finding ways to link technologies with fashion.
|
| putting environmental sustainability at the heart of business and the economy: a key challenge is how the world balances sustainability and prosperity. We need to understand how economic growth can be achieved within a sustainable framework; businesses need to identify new business models that will allow profitability and sustainability. | - Identifying and creating new business and economic models.
- Building an input/output model of key sectors of the economy and link it to carbon footprints.
- Communicating case studies of successful sustainable businesses and demonstrating how they achieved success.
|
| private sector engagement: it would be better to have private sector involved in making these changes - rather than introduce new regulation - but there are real concerns about how easily that can be achieved. | - Understanding why builders and consumers are risk averse.
- Finding ways of applying systems thinking across the built environment sector.
|
| energy efficiency in the built environment: energy is distributed and used inefficiently in the built environment, and the built environment is not constructed in an energy efficient way. | - Quantifying the level of demand side management arising from growth in energy services
- Understanding our future skills needs and developing the skills base
- Exploring how technology systems in buildings could be improved to integrate demand and supply of energy to meet service reliability
|
| creating a sustainable building stock: energy efficiency and sustainability do not just apply to new build - they also apply to the existing building stock. | - Understanding how to profile the energy efficiency of existing building stock.
- Investigating levels of demand for sustainable buildings.
- Understanding the logistics and calculating the costs of upgrading the existing building stock on a retrospective basis.
- Reviewing the planning systems and the status of sustainable building practices - are these the ones we need for future sustainable development?
|
| low and zero carbon living: the UK and the developed economies need to reduce their carbon footprints. | - Exploring carbon trading in more detail, including how it would work on a regional and business as well as a personal scale, including how personal carbon quotas would work.
- Developing an exit strategy from carbon trading.
- Exploring ways to bring heritage (particularly high carbon building stock) and future building needs together.
|
| metrics and measurement: there are no reliable and acceptable metrics group of efficiency and sustainability. Without these, the public (and experts) are confused by conflicting data and it is harder to plan for the future. | - Reviewing carbon accounting in the built environment.
- Modifying accepted accounting principles to include sustainability, whole life energy cycles.
- Reviewing the definition of quality of life.
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| whole life cycle energy costs: we do not know enough about - or have the techniques to measure - whole life cycle energy costs | - Exploring how to calculate the whole life of energy and finding out how to integrate whole life cost into economic models and decision making.
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| energy generation and distribution: should we have more distributed generation - and to what extent should it be organised? | - Examining centralised and decentralised generation with particular focus on the value of carbon and business models.
- Developing knowledge on the integration of local and national grids and identifying the most appropriate balance between the national grid and the 'local grid'.
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| energy security: security of sustainable energy supply is an important issue for the UK. | - Understanding the energy transition in a lot more detail.
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