Major UK energy journal publishes paper by UCL-Energy academics on UK gas policy

Senior UCL-Energy academics Dr Cliff Elwell, Dr Phillip Biddulph, Prof Robert Lowe and Prof Tadj Oreszczyn's have had paper, 'Determining the impact of regulatory policy on UK gas use using Bayesian analysis on publicly available data', published in Elsevier’s peer-reviewed journal Energy Policy.

With the current review of the UK's energy and environmental policy, this paper provides a timely and simple message: the early adoption of prescriptive policy, which is simple to enforce, can lead to significant energy and carbon savings.

The paper presents a novel method to investigate the efficacy of energy policy, using the example of regulation to require newly fitted boilers in England and Wales to be condensing.

National statistics were analysed using an innovative combination of theoretically informed models and Bayesian statistical analysis; results indicate significant energy and carbon savings associated with this regulation.

The compilation of high quality data will enable this method to be used to interrogate policy effectiveness and the real impact of new technologies on energy demand in buildings, to improve policy formulation and our understanding of the built environment.

Read the full journal article