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UCL Energy Institute

The UCL Energy Institute transcends the boundaries between academic disciplines in energy research. It coordinates cross-disciplinary teams from across UCL, providing critical mass and capacity for ambitious projects. 

The UCL Energy Institute has a particular focus on the area of energy-demand reduction, designed to speed the transition to a low-energy, low-carbon economy.

Main areas of research:

• the carbon intensity of energy, from legal frameworks for carbon capture and storage to micro-CHP field trials
• the energy intensity of services, from regulations for building thermal efficiency to modelling demand for transporting people and goods
• the consumption intensity of users, from understanding consumer response to price signals to behavioural responses to building control systems.

Key findings from research include:

• demonstrating that it is possible theoretically for UK’s domestic carbon emission to be reduced by 60% by 2050 and up to 90% of UK electricity can be supplied by renewables if demand side measures such as storage are deployed
• providing concrete examples of the “rebound effect” in the domestic sector, eg double-glazed conservatories are heated twice as much as single glazed
• development of novel energy efficient thermochromic coatings for glass
• discovering that space heating in industrial buildings may exceed the total consumption of all offices and shops and that that 30% of office lighting is wasted
• improving the fuel economy of cars through development of variable valve actuation
• development of several candidate systems for on-board hydrogen storage, and a hierarchically porous electrode structures for biofuel cells, with industrial partners.