A new local energy mapping approach for targeting urban energy renovations

Panel: 3. Local action

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Rajat Gupta, Oxford Brookes University, United Kingdom
Matt Gregg, Oxford Brookes University, United Kingdom

Abstract

Large-scale energy retrofits need to be better targeted, more cost-effective and result in a higher uptake to help alleviate fuel poverty and reduce energy use. This paper presents a localised Geographical Information System (GIS) based approach using publicly available national and local datasets on housing and energy to plan mass retrofit and provide targeted low carbon measures across UK cities. The study used these datasets to first spatially identify an area for energy retrofit (high energy using and/or high fuel poverty), and then applied a GIS-based bottom-up carbon mapping model (called DECoRuM) to estimate energy use and potential for energy reduction on a house-by-house level, and aggregated to urban scale.

To identify an appropriate neighbourhood case study area (comprising 700 households), publicly available datasets were assessed for the town of Bicester (UK), which included Ordnance Survey Mastermap and Address-point data (to identify dwelling characteristics e.g. building form), Energy Performance Certificate data (EPC, 6000 properties) and sub-national energy statistics available at lower layer super output area (LSOA≈700 households). When the EPC data for Bicester were compared with the sub-national statistics for Bicester, the average difference was found to be ~800 kWh. This is interesting as EPCs represent dwelling specific but modelled data whereas sub-national datasets represent actual but aggregated data. Superimposing the above datasets, a neighbourhood in southwest Bicester was selected as having the highest percentage of dwellings with energy consumption >300kWh/m2/yr (EPC), most dwellings in need of wall insulation (EPC), second highest mean total energy consumption (sub-national), and third highest percentage of fuel poor dwellings (sub-national). House-level energy assessment in the selected area using DECoRuM showed that a package based approach comprising fabric and heating system upgrade and solar PVs emerged as the most effective.