How people use and 'misuse' buildings - ESRC

ESRC Seminar Series 

Mapping the public policy landscape 

How people use and ‘misuse’ buildings

Foreword 

This seminar on how people use and ‘misuse’ buildings was organised by the Economic and Social Research 

Council (ESRC) and the Technology Strategy Board.The seminar explored how collaborative physical science 

and social science research can contribute to Government and industry efforts to cut carbon emissions from 

buildings, and is the second in a series looking at the relationship between people and technology. 

Addressing energy use is a top priority concern for Government, not only because of its impact on climate change, but 

also because security of supply and energy independence are matters of vital national interest. Buildings account for 45 

per cent of total UK energy use, the equivalent of all transport and manufacturing combined. However, despite high-profile 

publicity campaigns and the introduction of efficiency measures, building energy consumption continues to rise. 

Twenty-seven per cent of carbon emissions come from domestic buildings – twice that of commercial and public buildings 

and five times that of industrial buildings.The Government has targets for all new homes to be zero carbon by 2016, but 

existing buildings, most of which will still be standing in 2050, will need to be radically refurbished if we are to meet 

national and international emissions targets. 

Although many of the required technologies – insulation, efficient heat sources and digital controls – already exist, they are 

not yet widely deployed. Performance, cost-effectiveness and usability all need to be improved. When they are installed, 

the occupants of buildings do not always behave in the way that designers expect. 

More research is needed to find out precisely how people respond to technological innovation, and to re-examine the 

notion of ‘comfort’ which is often taken for granted in the design and building of our home and working environments. 

This seminar provided a showcase for innovative inter-disciplinary research, which demonstrates the value of close 

collaboration between the physical and social sciences in the field of energy efficiency. It also flagged up new areas for 

future research. 

The meeting provided an opportunity for a lively debate between senior researchers from building engineering and a 

range of social science disciplines and representatives of Government, innovative industries, NGOs and policy think-tanks. 

Professor Ian Diamond AcSS 

Chief Executive 

Economic and Social Research Council 

Mr Iain Gray 

Chief Executive 

Technology Strategy Board

How people use and ‘misuse’ buildings 

The researchers 

PROFESSOR KEVIN LOMAS, Department of Civil and Building Engineering University of Loughborough, 

Leverhulme Research Fellow and Visiting Fellow, University of Cambridge. 

DR DAVID SHIPWORTH, Reader in Energy and the Built Environment, University College, London. 

PROFESSOR ELIZABETH SHOVE, Department of Sociology, University of Lancaster. 

POLICY PERSPECTIVE: PROFESSOR MICHAEL KELLY, CHIEF SCIENTIFIC ADVISER, 

Department of Communities and Local Government. 

PROFESSOR DAVID UZZELL, SEMINAR CHAIRMAN, Department of Psychology, University of Surrey. 

ESRC Seminar Series Mapping the public policy landscape 


1

Executive Summary 

Introduction 

One of the key means of meeting national and international emissions targets by 2050 is to reduce 

energy consumption in buildings. Buildings represent nearly half of total UK carbon emissions, equal to 

the environmental impact of the transport and manufacturing sectors combined. And despite advances 

in technology and publicity campaigns, buildings energy consumption continues to rise. 

Twenty-seven per cent of carbon emissions come from domestic buildings – twice the emissions of 

commercial and public buildings and five times that of industrial buildings.The domestic sector is clearly 

crucial, but policy initiatives have so far concentrated on persuading developers to produce new homes 

with a lower impact. More effort is required to reduce energy consumption in existing housing stock. 

This seminar took place in the context of the Government’s decision to invest up to £30m in new research 

to help the construction industry deliver buildings with a much lower environmental impact.The aim of the 

research, which will be funded jointly by the Technology Strategy Board, industry and other funding agencies, 

is to pave the way for innovative building design to meet the challenge of future climate change. 

As a further boost, the Technology Strategy Board’s Low Impact Buildings Innovation Platform is launching 

a £10m competition for innovative solutions to improve the energy efficiency of existing housing stock. 

Companies will be invited to bid for contracts to work with social landlords, to refurbish at least 50 prototype 

houses of all types and evaluate their environmental performance. 

The UK Government has targets for all new homes to be zero carbon by 2016 and commercial and public 

buildings by 2019. However, even though new buildings have an economic and environmental impact, they 

constitute only a fraction of the building stock. Most of the UK’s 25m current housing was constructed 

decades ago before oil crises and global warming became issues – and most of them will still be standing in 

40 years’ time.This raises questions not just of technology, but also of politics. What measures can, or 

should, be used to persuade people to reduce their energy consumption 

Many of the technologies that we need to improve the energy efficiency of buildings already exist, such as 

insulation, double-glazing and efficient heating systems. So why aren’t more of us using them Introducing 

the theme of the meeting, Richard Miller, leader of the Innovation Platform for Low Impact Buildings, said 

that developing new technologies and materials alone would not enable the construction industry to meet 

the Government’s zero carbon targets. It was equally important to understand how people reacted to 

devices such as electronic controls, thermostats and meters. 

Low Impact Buildings Innovation Platform 

The Low Impact Buildings Innovation Platform has been set up to help the UK construction 

industry deliver buildings with a much lower environmental impact. The Innovation Platform 

will invest jointly with industry and other funders in projects to bring innovative solutions to 

this growing market, and to overcome barriers to wider use of existing solutions. 

The UK construction market is worth over £100bn per year, and there is growing pressure 

from customers and regulators for more environmentally friendly buildings, creating new 

growth opportunities for innovative businesses. 

The Innovation Platform was launched in May 2008 with an initial budget of £30m over 3 years. 


2 How people use and ‘misuse’ buildings

The priorities 

The technical challenges fall into five themes and Technology Strategy Board’s initial 

activity supports businesses to innovate in the following areas: 

Design for future climate change – designing buildings that meet the targets set by 

DCLG, are resilient to climate change, and that users want to live and work in 

Design and decision tools – enable development of integrated, interoperable systems for 

holistic building design 

Management and operation of buildings – ensuring that low-impact buildings deliver the 

design performance in use 

Better materials and components – filling in the gaps in what is commercially available 

Low carbon energy sources – integrating them into low-impact buildings and the 

supply grid. 

All activities take account of human behaviour and the way people use buildings; aiming at 

an integrated approach to building design, construction and operation. 

The Innovation Platform will find the best route to tackling the societal challenge by: 

Commissioning short studies to fill information gaps 

Collaborative R&D projects between businesses or between business and academia 

Demonstrator projects to validate innovative solutions 

Design competitions 

Exploring new business models in the sector. 

Who are we working with 

The Technology Strategy Board is working with other key players to align its programmes 

for maximum effect. These partners include: 

Government: 

Central Government Departments 

Government bodies i.e. Design Council 

Regional Development Agencies 

Devolved Administrations. 

Industry Bodies: 

UK Green Building Council 

National Platform 

Modern Built Environment Knowledge Transfer Network (MBE KTN). 

Other Funding Agencies: 

Carbon Trust 

Energy Technologies Institute 

Research Councils. 



3

It is frequently assumed that people ‘misuse’ their homes by knowingly wasting energy, but it was made clear 

during the seminar that the term could be misleading. Each of the speakers stressed that little was known 

about the interaction of people and technology and that more interdisciplinary research was needed. 

Professor David Uzzell, the seminar chairman, said that the challenge was not about changing people, but of 

creating the right conditions under which people could change their routine practices. A holistic approach 

was needed. 

In his presentation Professor Kevin Lomas said that when addressing the problem of energy consumption in 

buildings we needed to take account of all those who have a stake in our carbon dioxide emissions – from 

central to local government, through the house building chain, DIY, heating engineers and finally the 

occupants of dwellings. His work with colleagues in the CaRB project had shown that a relatively small 

number of people consumed relatively large amounts of energy. Decarbonising the existing housing stock 

was a priority but it would be a Herculean task. 

Dr David Shipworth described the limitations of models as a basis for energy reduction policy. He argued 

that there was an urgent need for more research based on real energy use in real homes. Recent research 

showed that some of the assumptions about the use of thermostats and timers had been wide of the 

mark. Contrary to expectations, there was no difference at all between what people reported about their 

temperature settings in 2007 and in 1984. Surprisingly, heating controlled by timers also tended to be on 

for longer periods than systems controlled by thermostat. He emphasised the need for collaboration 

between experts in buildings physics and social scientists to develop a better understanding of the 

interaction between people and energy technology. 

Professor Elizabeth Shove looked at energy use in the context of the changing notion of comfort, which 

she said deserved concerted attention in its own right, given the scale of its impact. Professor Shove said 

that it was vital to appreciate the extent to which ideas of comfort were determined – not only by 

industry and associated professions, but also by governments and regulators. She gave examples of a range 

of initiatives to reduce energy consumption by the introduction of seasonal variations in the indoor 

climate of offices. 

In his contribution to the seminar brochure, Michael Kelly, Chief Scientific Adviser, Department of 

Communities and Local Government warns that a concerted 40-year campaign is required to address the 

challenge of future climate change. Among his policy recommendations he says that universities should lead 

the way in retrofitting the existing buildings stock and urban local authorities should focus their energy 

strategies on what will be happening in 2050 instead of 2015. 

The Technology Strategy Board 

The Technology Strategy Board is a business-led executive non-departmental public body, 

established by the Government and sponsored by the Department for Innovation, 

Universities and Skills (DIUS). Its role is to promote and support research into, and 

development and exploitation of, technology and innovation for the benefit of UK business, 

in order to increase economic growth and improve the quality of life. 

The Technology Strategy Board invests in projects in which business and researchers work 

together to deliver new technology-based products and services. Projects must meet 

specific criteria and funding must be matched by the project partners. Around 800 

projects, representing over £1billion of joint investment, have been funded since 2004. 



Key insights and implications 

The interaction between a dwelling’s energy systems and its occupants has a profound influence on the 

energy use and the demand profile.This is increasingly being seen as a multi-disciplinary problem. 

The range in both heating energy demand and electrical energy demand is very large and the distribution 

is highly skewed: relatively small number of households use a lot of energy. 

The notion that people are wilfully using more energy is odd. 

The common characteristic of high-energy users may be that they have seized the opportunity to make 

a series of individually benign, but cumulatively significant, life-style decisions. 

One way of curtailing energy demand may lie in looking at energy use distribution. Perhaps policy should 

focus explicitly on the energy hungry and not the fuel poor. 

The convention of the 22ºC indoor climate all year round whatever the weather outside is an artefact of 

a combination of scientific, commercial, regulatory and professional processes, not something set in stone. 

The interactions between building fabric, occupants and technology are highly complex.There are many 

different types of heating controls, heating and ventilation requirements vary, and people have different 

needs and habits. 

We know more about the technologies of the home – their age, levels of insulation, types of heating 

system – than about how interior spaces are occupied, used and inhabited, or about what these 

inhabitants are wearing. 

People’s actions are more driven by habit than conscious economic trade-offs.Targeting initiatives at 

changing habits may be better than economic incentives. 

Policymakers need building energy models more firmly rooted in reality. 



5

Energy Security, Long-Term Sustainability 

and Resilience to Future Climate – The Role 

of Buildings 

In the following contribution to the seminar debate, Michael Kelly, Chief Scientific 

Adviser, Communities and Local Government, says that universities and urban 

local authorities have a leading part to play in retrofitting the UK’s building stock. 

Today the UK is a net importer of energy, and the efficient use of energy is now a matter of national 

security after a period of 30 years when we have been a net exporter. If everyone in the world lived 

a life to our standards, we would need three planet earths to source our consumption in a sustainable 

manner: this must change over the coming decades. We are going to have to mitigate against future 

climate change by reducing our emissions of greenhouse gases, and adapt to changes we have already 

set in train. In the UK nearly half of all emissions come from heating air and water in existing buildings 

and 87 per cent of today’s buildings will still be present forming about 70 per cent of the building 

stock in 2050. 

Imagine writing the history of the first half of the 21st century in 2050.To the extent that we have 

seen off the triple challenges of energy profligacy, unsustainable consumption and dangerous climate 

change, what story will we be telling In particular, since the existing built environment is nearly half the 

problem, will it have played at least its fair share in averting the known crises of today Indeed even 

closer than 2050, will we be able to say with confidence in 2020 that we are firmly on a trajectory to 

reducing carbon emissions by 80 per cent in 2050, having already achieved the interim target of a 26 

per cent reduction 

There are four parts to the energy reduction in buildings: 

(i) an improved thermal envelope for buildings 

(ii) more efficient appliances and building controls 

(iii) decarbonised sources of energy, whether from the grid or locally generated 

(iv) changes in personal attitudes and behaviour in respect of the profligate use of energy. 

The first three are matters of engineering, and the last a matter of psychology and sociology. If pressed, 

I would suggest that this last is as important on its own as the first three put together. 

In the papers that follow, these points are made with graphic illustrations.They show that many of the 

trends over the last few decades have been going in a direction that must be reversed – higher indoor 

temperatures, whole house heating, a proliferation of new electronic appliances, some of great energy 

consumption and so on. 

It is when we consider the country as a whole we appreciate the scale of the entire problem. Indeed 

scale is important here.There are 22million houses and five million other buildings which will need one 

or more major retrofits between now and 2050.Taking homes as an example, it is clear that £5,000 

per home will not get us very far on the engineering front, and with £500,000 we could knock the 

building down and start again.Taking the geometric mean between these extremes, £50,000 

expenditure per home is likely to be within a factor of two either way of a realistic cost, and that 

figure leads to a neat £1trillion investment for the domestic sector alone! 



As Peter Head from Arup reminds us, the UK led the world into the industrial age over a period 

of 40 years, and we should regard the next 40 years as a period to lead the world into the ecological 

age. It is important, as we pick all the low-hanging fruit, better loft insulation, double glazing, draughtproofing 

etc, that we do not rush to take measures that might need undoing in a decade or more 

from now. We should plan the next 40 years as a campaign. What should we be planning for the 

2020s, 2030s and 2040s 

The four actions which I have been advocating as a scientific adviser are as follows: 

1. Get the HE/FE sector to get their own estates to 2050 targets by 2035 to show the rest of us 

the way. 

Universities have estates that are proxies for homes, offices, public buildings and factories.The 

combination of engineering and psychology practiced on their own estate by some of the brightest 

practitioners in the land will allow early lessons to be learned so that only tried and tested solutions 

are rolled out across the nation. Academics are communicators and can tell the rest of us how to 

do it. With over 100 universities, their experiments would be done at a scale that would draw the 

construction sector in to develop new materials, products, services and methods of installation. 

2. Get urban local authorities to develop and publish trajectories out to 2050 on how they will get 

there, rather than concentrate solely on what can be done by 2015. 

The website of every company, university and local authority has a description of its green agenda, but 

the inspiration runs out in about 2015. We are on a 40-year journey, and we need to plan it properly. 

What should we focus on in the first and second half of the 2020s, 2030s and 2040s If during the 

2020s, for example, North Sea gas becomes too precious to use as a heating fuel, and is reserved as 

an industrial feedstock, how would we heat suburban London How will Balham, Basingstoke and 

Birmingham get from where it is now to where it needs to be in 2050, without locking in or out 

possible future options 

3. Get public procurement (defence, education, health, social housing, local authorities etc) to set 

ambitious standards for materials, products, controls, systems, installations etc, so that there is no 

more renovation but only retrofitting of its estate – this will galvanise a retrofit market which does 

not exist, while the renovation market is balkanised. 

There is no market for retrofitting, and all the many players in the supply and value chains associated 

with existing buildings would like to get involved, but they want clear leadership. If HMG were to set 

high standards for new materials, products, services and methods of installation, we might get a real 

market established which the private homeowners could subsequently avail themselves. 

4. Change people’s patterns of behaviour and attitudes towards the profligate use of energy. 

Over the last 40 years we have changed behaviour and attitudes on drink-driving, unprotected sex, 

seatbelts and smoking in confined public spaces. We need to move to a position where profligate use 

of energy is regarded as deeply antisocial, with behaviours that reflect that attitude. 

As various measures are announced across various Government Departments, I am seeing some of 

these actions being taken up in one form or another, and most heartening, the scale of the effort 

needed in the existing built environment to avert the triple challenge of energy, sustainability and 

climate resilience is being well appreciated. 



7

Energy use in dwellings: decarbonising the stock 

and people 

In his presentation, Kevin Lomas drew on work conducted in the interdisciplinary 

Carbon Reduction in Buildings (CaRB) project, with the aim 

of clarifying what is important in controlling carbon emission and helping 

identify the role that the economic and social sciences might play. 

The seminar brief describes the problem of CO2 emissions in terms of people’s choices and their attitudes, 

motivates, behaviour, incentives, psychology.This conveys the notion that emissions are our fault and even 

perhaps that save for our ‘bad attitude, wayward motives, dreadful behaviour, perverse incentives, and 

aberrant psychology’ all would be ‘right with the world’: I don’t think this is a correct view to take. 

The CaRB project 

CaRB is a consortium of five UK universities, supported by the Carbon Vision Initiative, 

which is funded by the Carbon Trust and the Engineering and Physical Sciences 

Research Council, with additional support from the Economic and Social Research 

Council and Natural Environment Research Council. The university partners are assisted 

by a steering panel drawn from UK industry and Government. 

Further information: 

> website: http://www.carb.org.uk 

> email: infor@carb.org.uk 

Our experience in the CaRB and other projects is that people are rather ignorant of matters to do with 

energy and are not much interested in the subject.They do not know how much energy they use, and how 

they use it, and they have even less idea of what they might do about their energy use – what consumes a 

lot of energy and what does not, what energy saving action they might take etc. And even those that do 

know are beset by frustrations if they wish to act, because it can be very hard or very expensive to do so. 

However, when addressing the problem of energy consumption in buildings we need to take account of all 

those who have a stake in our carbon dioxide emissions – from central to local government, through the 

house building chain, to plumbers and electricians and the DIY industry, and finally, to the occupants of 

dwellings themselves. 

Carbon emission targets 

Kyoto target – CO2 levels to 12.5 per cent below 1990 level by 2008 – 2012 

Aspire to reduce UK CO2 to 20 per cent below 1990 level by 2010 

Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, Energy White Paper (2003) – reduce UK 

CO2 levels by 60 per cent by 2050 

Generate 10 per cent of UK energy from renewables by 2010, but Business Enterprise 

and Regulatory Reform consultation proposed 15 per cent by 2020. 



The UK emissions targets are concerned with the emissions covered by the Kyoto protocol, ie those in the 

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC). But progress so far has been limited and in 2004 

it was announced that we certainly wouldn’t cut CO2 emissions by 20 per cent by 2010. 

Nevertheless, in October last year, the new climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, raised the Government 

target for a reduction in carbon emissions from 60 per cent to 80 per cent by 2050. 

It is hard to imagine, given the limited progress and current lack of momentum, that this is remotely achievable. 

The carbon intensity of the fuel supply tends to be the domain of ‘big engineering’, the physical form of the 

dwellings the domain of ‘building scientists’ and the inhabitants the domain of the ‘social sciences’. However, 

it is increasingly apparent that the interaction between a dwelling’s energy systems and its occupants has a 

profound influence on the energy use and the demand profile, which in turn affects the supply system. 

Decarbonisation is becoming increasingly seen as a multi-disciplinary problem. 

Within the CaRB project we have built a model of the English domestic housing stock. Our model 

represents 47 ‘types’ of house.The dwellings are scaled in size, and given different fabric heat losses and 

heating systems types, to represent the diversity within each type. 

Working with this model we can predict how the stock’s CO2 emissions will change as we install different 

energy efficiency measures. 

Figure 1: Energy efficiency predictions: 2001 English housing stock 

Heating CO2 emissions (MtCO2) 

100 

80 

60 

40 

20 

20% 

40% 

60% 

80% 

Appliance 

Interventions 

0% reduction 

+100% 

low 

energy 

lights 

+100% +100% 

low low 

standby energy 

power cold 

appliances appliances 

Existing 2001 English housing 

stock (123 MTCO 2) 

+100% solid wall insulation 

+100% cavity wall insulation 

+100% gas boilers as condensing 

+100% glazing 

+100% 0.5 ach ventilation rate 

+100% 300mm loft insulation 

+100% water heating interventions 

Heating 

Interventions 

0 

0 

10 20 30 40 

Appliance (cooking, lights and appliances) CO2 emissions (MtCO2) 

Source: Based on 1971 to 2000 average climate data 

The heating and hot water emissions (mostly from gas burning) are shown on the Y-axis and the emissions from other 

sources (mostly from using electricity) on the X-axis. The contours show lines of equal CO2 emissions. From our starting 

point, the emissions from the 2001 stock, we can move either vertically downwards or horizontally to the left to show 

reducing emissions. Using the model we can hypothesize about the impact of measures to improve efficiency, such as 

100 per cent cavity wall insulation and condensing boilers and so on. 

Our analysis shows that through reasonable energy efficiency measures we can reduce emissions for space 

heating by about 38 per cent. Others have done a similar analysis and come up with similar figures. It would 

be very hard, with the stock as is, to achieve greater cuts. 

Reducing electrical energy use through reasonable energy efficiency measures is predicted to take us 

down only a further six per cent or so, to 44 per cent. We can see that attention to lights, stand by power 

and appliance efficiency achieves only one sixth of the savings gained through building fabric and energy 

system efficiencies. 

Other colleagues in the Tarbase project have predicted rather similar emissions savings for some individual 

specific house types, and have gone on to show the contribution that embedded renewable energy systems 

like wind turbines might make. 



9

Figure 2: Technological interventions:Tarbase project 

100 

CO2 emissions savings 

(% of 2005 baseline) 

90 

80 

70 

60 

50 

40 

30 

20 

10 

0 

Demand 

side only 

93% 

Boiler 

93% 

Boiler 

93% 

Boiler 

93% 

Boiler 

93% 

Boiler 

1kW 15% 

µCHP 

3kW 30% 

µCHP 

1.5kW 

turbine 

Low wind 

site 

1.5kW 

turbine 

High wind 

site 

1.3kWp 

14% 

Solar pv 

3.9kWp 

14% 

Solar pv 

(Stirling Engine) 

(Fuel cell) 

Source: A Peacock, Heriot Watt, Tarbase project 

The graph shows that relatively large installations are needed to get a 60 per cent emissions cut, e.g. many more photovoltaic 

panels (PV) at today’s efficiencies than is plausible on a house roof and this is still nowhere near the 80 per cent cut we seek. 

The modelling results also assume that all the locally generated energy can be exported to the grid and will 

remain as a useful source of energy for other people. 

A Herculean task 

The first problem in achieving domestic energy efficiency relates to numbers and time. 

Virtually all the 24million existing buildings in the UK would need some attention to reduce their emissions 

by just 40 per cent.To complete the task in 40 years we would need to refurbish an entire city the size of 

Cambridge every month. If we assume that each intervention set would take a team of trained workers two 

weeks, we would need 23,000 teams of people to work at this rate non-stop for the next 500 months. 

External wall insulation is essential if we are to reduce heating energy use in solid wall houses. But this is far 

from straightforward. Walls are cluttered with satellite dishes, cables, wall plants, etc, and access to the backs 

of terraces is difficult and the geometries are complicated. 

The external wall insulation challenge 

The backs of terraces are complicated and whilst much of the heat loss is from the backs, insulating them is 

far from straightforward. 



Table 1: The problem of energy savings and pay-back times 

Payback Period - Years 

Intervention Installation Cost CO2 Implementation 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 

£ (kg/yr) 

Lights- Change to CFL DIY 0.50 11 Easy 

Hot Water Tank Insulation DIY 10.00 150 Easy 

Hot Water Pipes – Insulate DIY 10.00 60 Easy 

Double Glazing – Secondary DIY 50.00 150 Easy 

Draught Proofing – Doors/Windows DIY 100.00 150 Easy 

Draught Proofing – Edge of Floors DIY 10.00 130 Easy 

Loft Insulation – New DIY 200.00 1000 Easy 

Loft Insulation – New Professional 300.00 1000 Easy 

Loft Insulation – Top-up DIY 150.00 250 Easy 

Floors – Wooden DIY 200.00 350 Medium 

Walls – Cavity Professional 500.00 750 Medium 

Heating Controls Professional 500.00 500 Medium 

Loft Insulation – Top up Professional 250.00 250 Easy 

Walls Solid – Internal Insulation Professional 2,500.00 2400 Difficult 

Solar Water Heating Professional 3,500.00 750 Medium 

Boiler Replacement Professional 1,500.00 1800 Medium 

Ground Source Heat Pump Professional 8,000.00 1200 Difficult 

Air Source Heat Pump Professional 8,000.00 1200 Medium 

Floor – Solid – On Slab DIY 490.00 250 Medium 

Walls Solid- External Insulation Professional 5,000.00 2600 Difficult 

Doors-External – Change Professional 400.00 100 Medium 

Double Glazing – New Units Professional 500.00 750 Medium 

Source: ETI (2008) courtesy K. Seare 

This table of refurbishment cost, CO2 saved and pay back times from the ETI, has the measures ordered by payback time. 

Those that save over one tonne of CO2 per year are highlighted and those that cost over £1000 are shaded. The measures 

that reduce CO2 emissions a lot are the most expensive and have the longest pay back times. 

In England people might stay in their houses for typically seven years. It is estimated that the first 20 per 

cent to 30 per cent cut in emissions from a terraced house might cost around £3,000 to £4,000, a 40 per 

cent cut might push costs into the region of £15,000 to £20,000. We are talking about old technologies 

here so costs are unlikely to change dramatically – who is going to pay 

Micro-generation may not be as effective as we would like. Here are some field results for 22 social houses 

with photovoltaic panels. In all the houses, whether they use a lot of electricity or a little, the proportion of 

the electrical energy demand covered by the PV is small. 



11

Figure 3: Annual electricity consumption and production 

7000 

Annual electricity consumption and 

production (kWh) 

6000 

5000 

4000 

3000 

2000 

1000 

0 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 

House number 

Household consumption 

PV electricity used directly 

PV electricity exported 

Micro-generation may not be a solution. Even households with low total electrical energy consumption can make little direct 

use of energy generated by the solar panels. Only if the export arrangements and payments are satisfactory can such 

technologies hope to succeed, and they need to be much cheaper. 

It is evident that the decarbonisation of the existing stock is a Herculean task, particularly in a free 

democratic society. 

“There is, in my view, no low-hanging fruit, and there are no easy wins: just a myriad of 

tricky interacting problems to solve.” 

Kevin Lomas 

Variations in energy use 

National stock modelling is usually based around the idea of quasi-typical types and standardised occupancy. 

In fact energy use in dwellings, even very similar dwellings, is very variable. 

Figure 4: Total energy demand from 40 centrally heated Milton Keynes homes 

35% 

35% 

30% 

25% 

1990 

30% 

25% 

2005 to 2007 

20% 

20% 

15% 

15% 

10% 

10% 

5% 

5% 

0% 

20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 220 240 

0% 

20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 220 240 

kWh/day at 5º 

kWh/day at 5º 

Source: A.Summerfield, UCL 



The electricity and gas consumption in homes in Milton Keynes, measured in the CaRB project, shows a 

skewed distribution. In these houses there was an increase, over 15 years or so, in both the heating and 

electrical energy demand. But the highest increases were in those homes that already consumed the most 

energy; their electrical energy use increased substantially – by about 70 per cent. 

Figure 5: Electrical energy use: 72 homes 

Annual electricity consumption (kWh) 

8000 

6000 

4000 

2000 

0 

Low energy group Medium energy group High energy group 

HCS consumption 

Cold appliance consumption 

Active appliance consumption 

Source: S.Firth, K.Lomas, A.Wright and R.Wall. Identifying trends in the use of domestic appliances from household electricity 

consumption measurements, Energy and Buildings 40 (2008) 

The measured electrical energy use of 72 social housing units displayed a similar distribution.The energy 

use varied by a factor of seven with the highest consumers using much more than the majority.The highenergy 

consumers have high consumption from appliances that are continuously on or on standby, and also 

high consumption from other ‘active’ appliances’, e.g.TVs, lights etc. 

Figure 6: Electricity use trend: 72 homes, two years 

6000 

Average annual electricity 

consumption (kWh) 

5000 

4000 

3000 

2000 

1000 

First year of monitoring 

Second year of monitoring 

+4.5% 

-11.7% 

-0.7% 

+5.1% 

0 

All houses 

(n = 72) 

Low energy group 

(n = 24) 

Medium energy group 

(n = 24) 

High energy group 

(n = 24) 

4.5% overall increase in electrical energy use – significant 

10.2% increase for ‘continuous and standby’ (C&S) appliances 

4.7% increase for ‘active’ appliances 

Highest consumers responsible for greatest increase. 

Source: Energy and Buildings 40 (2008) 

Among the 72 social houses, there was also a significant increase in electricity use over just two years. Again the highest 

energy users showed the greatest absolute increase in energy used. 



13

It is worth reflecting a little on these results. We would be wrong, I think, to conclude that the households 

that are high energy consumers are driven by wayward motives and perverse incentives, or that they are in 

some way psychologically different from the low energy consumers. Rather, perhaps, their consumption is 

driven by a succession of decisions, none of them particularly remarkable and each of them entirely logical – 

but with the common feature that they each lead to increased energy use. In fact it is probable that not 

many of the decisions we make, concerning our homes, actually leads to sustained lower energy demand. 

Conversely, very many domestic ‘developments’ will increase energy demand. 

It is perhaps, the successive accumulation of these energy-increasing decisions that leads, eventually, to the 

very high-energy usage of some households. Each of the decisions is relatively benign, and none are made 

with the intention of increasing energy demand, but the overall effect is a remarkable increase in energy use. 

Perhaps a common feature of the high energy users is that they had the opportunity to make lifestyle and 

other decisions and they were merely exercising this opportunity. 

The question is how do we intervene in this process 



What do we mean by ‘misuse’ of buildings 

Drawing on collaborative research for the CaRB Project, David Shipworth 

highlights the importance of inter-disciplinary teamwork and argues there 

is an urgent need for more real-use data. 

Models can be a mixed blessing 

The much-quoted statistic used by the Committee on Climate Change, that average temperatures in our 

homes have risen by 6ºC since 1970 is a good example of the modelling-related issues that need to be 

addressed by researchers. 

The assumption that we are heating our homes to a higher standard and consciously ‘misusing’ buildings is 

based on theoretical models which reveal a gap between predictions and what actually happens.The public 

is often blamed when energy-saving campaigns appear not to be working. 

Findings from the CaRB project suggest the reasons for the gap are more complicated: 

The models are best case idealisations, based on unoccupied buildings and do not reflect reality 

Building physics is not properly understood 

There is incomplete understanding of how heating, lighting and hot water systems work 

It is technically impossible to build or renovate buildings as they are modelled 

We need to understand how people use buildings to create comfort 

The interactions between building fabric, technology, heating control systems and people really matter. 

If we want to quantify ‘misuse’ of buildings first we need to understand the meaning of ‘proper’ use. 

This involves teasing apart all these factors, using real data from occupied buildings, which has been 

designed and collected by interdisciplinary research teams. 

“Interdisciplinary research involves teams of people from diverse disciplines working 

together to change and improve the methods they are using.” 

David Shipworth 

Figure 1: Condensing boiler efficiency distribution (monthly data) 

Proportion of operating months (%) 

100 

80 

60 

40 

20 

0 

Under 66 66-70 70-74 74-78 78-82 82-86 86-90 90-94 94-98 Above 98 

Heating season 

Non-heating season 

Source: Carton Trust (2007) Micro-CHP Accelerator – Interim Report. London, p.35 

This shows how the performance of A-rated boilers can vary when use is monitored in real life. Similar variations have been 

found in studies of insulation. These results underline the need for data from real buildings rather than laboratories. 



15

Figure 2: Standards of comfort – mean internal and average winter external temperatures 

Temperature (ºC) 

20 

18 

16 

14 

12 

10 

8 

6 

4 

2 

0 

1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 

Average internal temperature (ºC) 

External temperature (ºC) 

Source: BRE (2008) Domestic Energy Fact File 

This graph is based on hypothesized data – for example temperature data does not exist for 1970. Although BRE made the 

basis of the figures clear we are left with the belief that this is real data. 

It is easy to forget that the interactions between building fabric, occupants and technology are highly 

complex. For example, there are many different types of heating controls, heating and ventilation 

requirements vary and people have different needs and habits. 

The CaRB Home Energy Survey looks at the socio-economic as well as the socio-technical factors in 

domestic energy use.The survey was directed, designed and analysed by Michelle Shipworth and conducted 

by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen). It involved a team of researchers from different 

disciplines who looked at: 

The building – including age, type (detached, terraced etc), insulation, double-glazing etc 

Heating technologies including type of heating and heating controls 

Heating practices reported by participants 

Heating behaviours monitored by temperature recorders 

Energy consumption using meter readings 

Socio-economic variables including income and age. 

Variables were harmonised with National Statistics socio-demographic measures, the Government’s English 

House Condition Survey, the Government’s Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) measure of home 

energy efficiency, and with an ESRC-funded project in 1984 (to provide longitudinal data). 

Figure 3: Thermostat settings by study-area: INT84 sample compared to the CARB07 

subsample meeting INT84 core and regional sampling criteria. 

25 

Respondent reported 

temperature setting (ºC) 

20 

15 

1984 

2007 

10 

INT84 

CaRB07 (INT84_CORE + INT84_REG) 

Study-Year 

The results showed that there was no difference at all between what people reported about their central heating thermostat 

settings in 2007 and 1984. There is also a strong correlation between what people say and reports from building surveyors. 



Implications 

This does not mean that the internal temperatures in our homes have not risen. Better insulation should 

lead to less variation in temperatures inside homes. 

There was no evidence that people have deliberately increased the temperature to ‘take back’ some of 

the money they have saved through double-glazing or insulation as has been suggested.This suggests that 

people’s actions are more driven by habit than conscious economic tradeoffs.Targeting initiatives at 

changing habits may be better than economic incentives. 

The results – which were a complete surprise – could not have been done without the collaboration of 

social and physical scientists who developed new methods of collecting data. 

Some of the findings need unpacking in more detail: 

Why were thermostats located in living rooms set higher than thermostats located in halls in 1984, 

but not in 2007 

Central heating control systems need re-thinking. Contrary to assumptions, the results show that CHS 

controlled with timers are used for longer. 

Thermostatic control of central heating (with thermostats or thermostatic radiator valves) does not 

lower maximum living room temperatures. 

Acknowledge complexity 

Short term – energy use arises from complex dynamic interactions between fabric, 

services and occupant behaviour 

Long term – these are strongly influenced by intermediaries (regulation, standards, 

media, construction skills, etc) 

Some interventions produce positive and negative benefits 

Predictability of immediate or ongoing savings from specific interventions is unreliable – 

and is likely to remain so 

Nationally, we need enough high-quality data to independently observe the impact 

of interventions 

Interventions must be implemented with robust evaluation frameworks 

Quick win energy savings from the built environment is a myth. 

The results highlight the need to acknowledge the complexity of energy use in buildings. 

To summarise: 

We need to unpack the notion of misuse 

Interactions between occupants, fabric and technology matter 

We need to build interdisciplinary teams of social and physical scientists 

The quality and quantity of data must be improved 

Design monitoring and evaluation has to be robust, otherwise we don’t know where we’re going. 



17

The Home Energy Survey 

Background 

The key determinants of a home’s space heating are the thermostat setting and the 

duration of the heating. A one per cent rise in temperature setting is estimated to case 

a 1.55 per cent rise in CO2 emissions and a one per cent rise in heating hours to a 

0.49 per cent rise in CO2. 

The UK Government’s Market Transformation Programme claimed that persuading 

householders to use heating controls properly was one of the most promising actions 

for further reductions in home energy consumption. 

This survey, which forms part of the CaRB consortium, included building, technical, social 

and behavioural measures. 

Methods 

Face-to-face interviews were held with 427 households; the questions covered details of 

the building, heating practices, heating technologies and socio-demographics. 

Small temperature sensors were placed in the living room and the main bedroom of each 

home for a six-month period from July 2007-February 2008. 

Results 

Results for the 358 households with gas or oil fired central heating systems with radiators 

There was an enormous variation in both estimated and recorded thermostat settings 

The mean and median estimated thermostat settings are 21ºC and the standard 

deviation is 2.5ºC. While 30 per cent of the sample had estimated settings of less than 

20ºC, 40 per cent had estimated settings of 22 per cent or higher 

People living in homes built 1945-1964 have higher temperature settings than those 

living in pre-1919 homes 

There is less variability in the estimated number of hours per day that the central heating 

is active 

There is a great deal of variability in the reported number of hours that the central 

heating is on, (mean 9.5; median 8.0; standard deviation 5.4 hours) 

Detached houses are heated for longer than mid-terrace houses 

Heating systems operated by timer are active on average 0.4 hours per day longer than 

those operated manually – contrary to policy assumptions 

Central heating thermostats seem to live incognito in many homes – many households 

report having no thermostat, but Government figures suggest the vast majority have 

thermostats 

When controls are used there seems to be no reduction in average maximum 

temperatures and an increase in duration of heating 

Even in the more energy efficient dwellings there was no correlation between estimated 

and reported central heating thermostat settings 

Householders may adjust their thermostats fairly frequently. 



Conclusions and policy implications 

Adding controls to central heating systems may not reduce energy use 

Policymakers need building energy models more firmly rooted in reality 

The efficiency of data collection can and should be substantially improved 

Policies and programmes could fruitfully target specific groups of homes and households, 

including households living in detached houses or homes built in 1945-1964 

A radical re-evaluation of heating controls is needed. A project on Carbon, Comfort 

and Control, led by University College, London is applying a user-centred approach to 

developing new forms of heating control that do save energy. 



19


In her presentation, Elizabeth Shove questions the notion that people 

wilfully increase their energy consumption and puts the case for a better 

understanding of the changing concepts of comfort. 

The table below describes two Cypriot houses – one inhabited by the parents, the other by the 

grandparents of the same family. It provides a useful reminder, not only of the rate of change, but also of 

the many features – floors, surfaces, lighting and so on – that intersect and co-evolve. For example, the 

move from animal oil to electricity has an impact on the time and effort required to run the home and 

on the kind of life lived in it. 

The details about the more recent house show, quite dramatically, that increases in the use of energy and 

water are outcomes of global, corporate and industrial changes in how homes are designed and built – 

regardless of the personal views of those who live within them. 

Table 1: Cypriot houses 

Features Grandparents’ house Parents’ house 

Area per person 18m 2 66.5m 2 

Roof Timber, mud, straw Reinforced concrete 

External wall Stone and mud Reinforced concrete frame, brick 

and cement mortar 

External openings 3 timber doors 14 doors and windows with 

aluminium frames and imported 

glass, 1 door of imported timber 

Internal finishes Natural gypsum Processed gypsum, vinyl paint, 

ceramic 

Floors White soil Ceramic, terrazzo and carpet 

Internal services None Copper, galvanised steel and PVC 

pipe, PVC covered copper wire 

External services None Copper, galvanised steel, salt 

glazed earthenware and PVC pipe, 

aluminium wire 

Lighting Animal oil Electricity 

Spacing heating Wood burning fire Diesel oil 

Spacing cooling None Electricity 

Cooking and washing Wood burning fire Gas, diesel, oil, electricity, solar 

Control of comfort 

Inhabitants experience a wide 

range of conditions 

Inhabitants experience a narrow 

range of conditions 

Control of lighting Limited control Extensive control 

Servicing the dwelling takes considerable time Takes barely any time 

Social network Local friends and relatives International networks, 

electronic communication 

Source: Golton, B. (1994), ‘Affluence and the ecological footprint of dwelling in time – a Cyprus perspective’ 



“We need to go beyond an analysis of the ‘behaviour’ of individual occupants and to 

realise that observed patterns of consumption are outcomes of wide-ranging, systemic 

transformations in culture, technology and social practice.” 

Elizabeth Shove 

Indoor climate change 

Various sources of evidence, mainly based on modelled data, suggest that the indoor climate in homes and 

offices in the UK has changed quite significantly over the past 40 years. Whatever the exact temperature 

statistics, this development in how we heat, cool and live in our homes is crucial to our CO2 emissions on a 

big scale and over a long term.Yet the notion that people are wilfully using more energy is odd. 

Significant changes in demand have to do with changing understandings of comfort, but in much policy 

debate the notion of comfort is itself taken for granted. Rather than setting this issue aside or pushing it 

to the background I would argue that this is a topic that deserves concerted attention in its own right, 

especially given the scale of its impact. 

Technologies and conventions of comfort 

It is sometimes assumed that comfort is something basic, physiological or natural. However, people in 

different cultures and at different points in history have reported being comfortable at a very much wider 

range of temperatures than that which we take to be ‘normal’ in the UK today.The convention of 22ºC 

all year round whatever the weather outside is an artefact of a combination of scientific, commercial, 

regulatory and professional processes, not something set in stone. 

Technologies of comfort 

Filled cavity 

50mm cavity batts 

100mm aerated block 

13mm lightweight plaster 

Partial fill 

25mm cavity boards 


13mm lightweight plaster 

Clear cavity 


25mm thermal board 

Credit: John Bavosi / Science Photo Library 

In the 1940s it was hard to buy a suit without a waistcoat. Now it is rare to find one with. 

This is not an issue of personal preference. 



21

All the technologies illustrated here form part of past or present ‘systems’ for managing the relation 

between people and the indoor environment. Sometimes the ‘problem’ is delegated to clothing, or to 

the building or body, or to mechanical systems of heating and cooling or to varying proportions of all. 

What matters is the relation between these arrangements and all the elements that constitute what we 

call ‘comfort’. 

The real challenge is to understand how collective conventions of clothing, comfort, body and building 

evolve over the longer run: what killed the waistcoat as a familiar item of clothing and might it ever return 

as part of a future system of comfort Actual data on indoor conditions and on what people wear is hard 

to come by. We know more about the technologies of the home – their age, levels of insulation, types of 

heating system – than about how interior spaces are occupied, used and inhabited, or about what these 

inhabitants are wearing. Even so, future estimates imply further increases in heating and cooling in pursuit of 

an unsustainably standardised indoor climate. 

If contemporary environmental problems are to be taken seriously, we will need new approaches in design, 

technology and social science and we will need to address new research questions about the relation 

between buildings, comfort, clothing, climate and inhabitants. 

If we are really concerned about the energy used in buildings then comfort has to be a core topic. It also has 

to be approached creatively, with an understanding of its social and cultural history, with an appreciation that 

future expectations are unlikely to be the same as those of today, and recognising that such expectations are 

configured by the built environment itself. In this regard it is vital to appreciate the extent to which ideas of 

comfort are actively made and reproduced – not only by industry and associated professions but also by 

Governments, regulators and others who maintain and perpetuate some but not other interpretations. 

Explaining daily showering 

The amount of water used for showering is expected to double from around eight to 16 per cent of 

household consumption by 2020. Why might people be ‘misusing’ bathrooms in this way What is driving 

this bizarre action What would it take to encourage people to think differently 

Getting wet every day 

The idea of showering everyday is an incredibly recent phenomenon. In the UK, showers were typically retrofitted into homes 

that had only a bath, often in the 1970s. And, fifty years before that the bathroom was itself something of a novelty. 



It is tempting to think that showering has to do with personal hygiene. However, this is not entirely convincing 

since the amount of grime collected in 24 hours is typically limited and cooling technologies limit sweating. 

We therefore need to consider other issues like the idea of freshness, the positive valuing of the sensation 

of water on the skin, the thrill of invigoration, ideas of relaxation, comfort and experience. Framed like this, 

the shower-manufacturing/water industry is better understood as part of the leisure sector. 

Table 2:Technology and practice in the bathroom 

Frequency per day Litres per event Annual water use 

Power shower 1 84 30,660 

Power shower 0.3 84 9,198 

Electric shower 1 27 9,855 

Bath 0.3 73 7,994 

Electric shower 0.3 27 2,956 

Source: Critchley, D. and Phipps, D. (2007) Water and energy efficiency: showers project report, United Utilities 

Assumes 7 minutes for all showers: actually people spend longer in power showers than in electric ones – each extra minute of 

daily power showering adds 4,380 litres per year. 

As this table suggests, technologies do not promote more or less energy use in their own right. People do 

not consume water for its own sake; they consume the services – like bathing or showering – that it makes 

possible.Their motives are associated with the experience of showering and bathing, not of saving or 

wasting water. 

The volume of the built environment 

There is one further vital but often overlooked issue in relation to buildings and energy consumption. 

This has to do with the total volume of built space. 

Figure 1: Total volume of space 

100 

Floor space per person (m 2 ) 

80 

60 

40 

20 

0 

China EU-15 Japan US 

Commercial 

Residential 

This figure, from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), provides a snapshot of floor space per 

head in different parts of the world. This is a very important image in that all this space tends to be heated and cooled to 

something like the comfort standards already discussed. 



23

One obvious and potentially significant way of reducing energy and water consumption in buildings is to 

reduce the total volume of the built environment.This is so obvious that it is rarely mentioned. 

In the UK, the housing stock has certain typical space-related characteristics.There are many terraced 

houses, designed and built as family homes. However, much of this space is now occupied by freezers, 

washing machines and domestic appliances, so much that these buildings have changed their status, figuring 

not as family homes but as ‘starter properties’ for couples or for single people.This, then, is a further topic 

that deserves concerted attention. 

Understanding social and technical change 

There is a range of theories and concepts – from the social sciences and beyond – that could and should 

be mobilised to address questions of energy and water consumption in buildings. 

There are, for instance, relevant ideas about socio-technical transitions and how they proceed; about 

material culture and consumption; the dynamics of practice (as opposed to behaviour), and more. 

Consider, for instance, Rip and Kemp’s multi-level perspective on innovation, as developed by Frank Geels. 

The basic idea here is that as socio-technical arrangements become established, so they intersect and 

become more dense, forming interlocking complexes or ‘regimes’.These regimes in turn constitute 

‘selection environments’ which variously favour and limit the development of some but not other ‘novel’ 

arrangements. Regimes are conditioned by higher level ‘landscapes’ that are themselves the outcomes of 

interlocking regimes. 

Regimes of comfort 

Contemporary regimes of comfort are constituted through a range of regulations and technical 

procedures; understandings of ordinary indoor clothing; global building materials and air-conditioning 

industries; conventions of ventilation, sweat and smell; and actual built environments designed and run in a 

particular way.Together these represent a paradigm of normal order, they define future research questions, 

and they condition the sense of what is possible. 

Put simply, now that buildings are routinely heated and cooled to 21 or 22 ºC, a figure that is itself based 

on scientific research that has its own social and cultural history, this is what people come to expect and 

when that happens, anything else is deemed odd.Technological solutions are then harnessed to generate 

these ‘normal’ conditions. 

Innovations in practice 

28ºC 



In summer 2005 the Japanese Prime Minister fronted a national ‘Cool Biz’ advertising campaign.The simple 

idea was to set thermostats at 28ºC in Government buildings and encourage people to wear looser 

clothing, not ties and jackets. Warm Biz, in which winter temperatures are set at 20º promises to save even 

more energy and significantly reduce CO2 emissions. 

This idea is spreading. On 30 July 2008, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched the ‘Cool UN’ 

initiative to reduce energy consumption and the carbon footprint of UN Headquarters in New York … 

In the winter months, there will be a 5°C reduction in heating.This will lower energy costs by about 

US$1million and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 2,800 tons for the year 2008. 

http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/2008/08/26/cool-united-nations/ 

Rather less dramatically, the UK’s TUC also sought to introduce a cool work campaign in 2006. 

These campaigns represent an effort to actively intervene in what counts as normal, in what constitutes 

comfort and how it is delivered. More generally, the prospect of deliberately reintroducing the seasons has 

far-reaching ramifications for what people do, when, where and how. Critically, it promises to destabilise the 

really problematic assumption of standard conditions year round. 

In theory, we might imagine something similar in relation to showering experience – perhaps in the form of 

refreshing ‘mists’; deodorising wiping, or some other kind of relaxing body treatment. Making more efficient 

technologies is important, but if the real challenge is to dislodge showering as a daily habit, the task is one 

of thinking through the specific kind of experience offered, and how that might be redefined. 

Extending the research agenda 

I hope to have shown that one of the main aims of this policy seminar is misplaced or at least limiting: 

the issue is not to understand the principal drivers of user behaviour in buildings but to understand how 

everyday habits change and how the built environment is implicated in these transformations. 

Ideas about the relation between niches, regimes and landscapes are promising but this is just one example. 

There are many other concepts that could also be mobilised to address systemic processes of stability and 

transformation in daily life. Making use of these intellectual resources would generate a significantly different 

brief for this event, and a rather more challenging research agenda. At a minimum, and by way of illustration, 

the following items would be included on such a ‘to do’ list of research resolutions: 

Develop new energy sensitive sciences of comfort: consider clothing and buildings together; seek to 

extend the range of indoor conditions and concepts of comfort. 

Understand and exploit diversity in what people take to be normal in relation to showering, bathing, 

heating and cooling and in terms of the spaces they inhabit. 

Understand the cultural production of the body: sense, sensations, sweat – experiences of freshness and 

how these are reconfigured. 

Confront political issues associated with making and not simply ‘meeting’ needs – consider how to 

design buildings that challenge and re-engineer concepts of normality: water supplies, space standards, 

service provision. 

Better understand how social and technical systems co-evolve and how social conventions change. 

Consider whether and how it is possible to intervene in these ‘systems’ in transition. 



25

Other relevant research: 

ESRC Research Group on Lifestyles, 

Values and Environment 

RESOLVE is an exciting collaboration located at the University of Surrey involving four internationally 

acclaimed departments: the Centre for Environmental Strategy, the Surrey Energy Economics Centre, the 

Environmental Psychology Research Group and the Department of Sociology. Funded by the ESRC as part 

of the Research Councils’ Energy Programme, RESOLVE aims to unravel the complex links between 

lifestyles, values and the environment. 

The group provides robust, evidence-based advice to policymakers in the UK and elsewhere who are 

seeking to understand and to influence the behaviours and practices of ‘energy consumers’. 

The inter-disciplinary research programme is arranged around six thematic research strands: carbon footprinting; 

psychology of energy behaviours; sociology of lifestyles; household change over time; lifestyle 

scenarios; energy/carbon governance. 

Recent Research in RESOLVE related to this seminar 

RESOLVE is undertaking a study of 100 households and their electricity and gas consumption, in collaboration 

with the Eden Project and Homebase.The aim of this study is to examine households’ historic energy 

consumption through annual consumption data from the utility companies.The households will then take 

part in a year of intervention activities that are designed to make the participants think about their 

consumption habits and the associated environmental impacts. Each household’s energy consumption for 

the year of the intervention will be compared to its historic consumption.The information will be used to 

assess the short-term and long-term impact of the interventions and will also be passed on to the 

households to act as a form of feedback, so they can view their consumption behaviour. 

BARENERGY is an EU funded project that aims to identify the relevance and strengths of various barriers 

for energy behaviour changes among consumers and understand how activities by political authorities, 

energy producers and NGOs can overcome these barriers.The project analyses barriers in the fields of 

domestic energy use, household appliances and private mobility in six European countries. Interesting 

findings so far include the potential difficulties ahead for the UK Government’s Zero Carbon Initiative and 

reconciling the construction industry's responsibilities for sustainable housing with consumer acceptance of 

the necessary changes that will need to be made. 

Measuring the Carbon Footprint of UK Households has involved accounting for carbon emissions from 

energy used directly in homes (eg space heating, lighting), for personal transportation (including personal 

vehicle use and personal aviation), and also from energy used upstream in the production of goods and 

services purchased by UK households. Investigation into the underlying uses for which the energy is 

consumed shows that while over a quarter of carbon emissions arise due to our pursuit of leisure and 

recreation, a considerable amount of carbon is locked up in basic household activities and practices such as 

heating and maintaining the home, feeding ourselves, and maintaining health and hygiene. Furthermore, 

much of the carbon emissions from cooking, laundering and bathing as well as emissions embedded in the 

food, clothes and appliances is also highly influenced by the way we organise facilities within our homes and 

conduct our day-to-day lives. 

http://www.surrey.ac.uk/resolve/ 



Figure 1: CO 2 emissions for an average UK household (2004) 

Commuting, 9% 

Communication, 1% 

Spacing heating, 15% 

Education, 2% 

Recreation 

& leisure, 26% 

Household, 12% 

Food & catering, 15% 

Health & hygiene, 8% 

Clothing & footwear, 11% 

The 40% House 

The 40 per cent house programme is a demand-side energy strategy to deliver 60 per cent carbon saving 

in the UK’s residential energy use by 2050. 

Led by Dr Brenda Broadman, the Environmental Change Institute Oxford University, the report proposes 

raising the performance of existing housing stock to current best practice for new build.The report brings 

together the stories of seven pioneer households, who have successfully refurbished their homes to achieve 

deep cuts in their personal carbon emissions. 

http://www.40percent.org.uk/ 

Carbon Vision Buildings 

Carbon Vision Buildings, which is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council 

(EPSRC) and the Carbon Trust, is focussed on reducing the emissions of carbon from the UK building stock. 

Within CVB there are three separate projects: 

Carbon Reduction in Buildings (CaRB) 

Building Market Transformations (BMT) 

Technology Assessment for Radically Improving the Built Asset Base (TARBASE). 

From the results of the various modelling exercises and experiments with policies and technologies, Carbon 

Vision Buildings will identify the roles which the Government, the construction industry, building occupants 

and other stakeholders can play in achieving the transition to a low carbon building stock. 

http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/ResearchFunding/Programmes/Energy/Funding/CarbonVision/BuildingsProjects.htm 



27

Leadership Fellowships on Climate Change 

As part of its contribution to the Living with Environmental Change (LWEC) Programme, the ESRC 

is funding a number of high profile research fellowships proposing innovative approaches or application 

of leading edge social science to addressing key research issues in mitigating and/or adapting to 

climate change.The fellowships, which started in summer/autumn 2008, will last for up to three years. 

They are intended to complement existing initiatives in the field including the Tyndall Centre for Climate 

Change Research. 

Transitions in practice: climate change and everyday life 

Professor Elizabeth Shove’s Fellowship will not look at changing the behaviour of isolated individuals. Instead, 

she will explore how the complex of practices that constitutes daily life – leisure, cleaning, food provisioning, 

mobility and more – might be reconfigured on a massive scale. 

Switching attention from individual behaviour to complex systems of practice has the power to ‘turn 

problems on their head’ and to generate new ways of thinking and acting which in turn require new forms 

of social scientific input. 

Living with Environmental Change Programme 

http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/programmes/lwec/aims.asp 



Sources and resources 

'Affluence and the ecological footprint of dwelling in time – a Cyprus perspective', Golton, B. (1994). 

Paper presented to the First World Conference on Sustainable Construction of the CIB TG16 Group at 

Tampa, Florida, USA, November 1994. 

Building a Greener Britain by Gavin Killip, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, July 2008. 

www.buildingagreenerbritain.org.uk 

Carbon Reduction in Buildings (CaRB) – Understanding the social and technical factors that influence energy use 

in UK homes, Kevin Lomas,Tadj Oreszcyn, David Shipworth, Andrew Wright and Alex Summerfield. 

Presentation at COBRA 2006: the Construction Research Conference of the RICS, Sept 2006, London. 

Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: the social organization of Normality, Elizabeth Shove. Oxford: Berg. 2003. 

Debating the future of comfort: environmental sustainability, energy consumption and the indoor environment. 

Heather Chappells and Elizabeth Shove. Building Research & Information Jan 2005. 

Gaps, barriers and conceptual chasms: theories of technology transfer and energy in buildings. 

Energy Policy.Vol 26, No15 1998. 

Manufacturing weather: climate change, indoors and out 

Elizabeth Shove www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/shove/transitionsinpractice/ManufacturingWeather.pdf 

Processes and patterns in transitions and systems innovations: refining the co-evolutionary multi-level perspective. 

FW Geels,Technological Forecasting and Social Change Volume 72, Issue 6, July 2004. 

The BRE Trust Companies, BRE and BRE Global, are research, consultancy, training, testing and 

certification organisations delivering sustainability and innovation across the built environment and beyond. 

www.bre.co.uk 

The Carbon Trust aims to accelerate the move to a low carbon economy by working with organisations 

to reduce carbon emissions and develop commercial low carbon technologies www.carbontrust.co.uk 

Details of relevant activity supported by the Technology Strategy Board can be found at: 

www.innovateuk.org 



29

The Economic and Social Research Council is the UK’s leading research and 

training agency addressing economic and social concerns. It aims to provide 

high-quality research on issues of importance to business, the public sector 

and Government.The issues considered include economic competitiveness, 

the effectiveness of public services and policy, and our quality of life. 

The ESRC is an independent organisation, established by Royal Charter 

in 1965, and funded mainly by the Government. 

Economic and Social Research Council 

Polaris House 

North Star Avenue 

Swindon SN2 1UJ 

Telephone: 01793 413000 

Fax: 01793 413001 

www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk

How people use and 'misuse' buildings - ESRC

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