Research needs

After attending a 2 day Research Councils UK (RCUK) workshop on future research needs in Energy in the Home and Workplace I have been thinking about research needs around energy efficiency. It is true to say that just applying existing technologies into situations where they are already economic would go a long way to closing the energy efficiency gap and achieving the full potential, there is always scope for more research. To me this seems to fall into three buckets; technology, information and social/economic.

My back of the envelope (front of the iPad) thoughts on my energy efficiency research wish list are:

• super thin, lightweight, low cost (and probably transparent) insulation materials
• building materials that change thermal and transparency characteristics
• low cost high performance heat exchangers
• low cost thermoelectric generators that operate at low temperatures
• better grid and local scale electrical storage technologies

• how do we use the energy consumption data that exists (especially for non-domestic buildings) to learn more about buildings actually perform and make the data transparent to enable collaboration across cities and regions?
• how do we make our building models more accurate?

• build a detailed understanding of the enabling conditions and constraints on decision makers that affect energy use and energy efficiency investment.  This has to be on a disaggregated segment basis, different segments even in a sector such as commercial buildings or the public sector have different enabling conditions and constraints.
• build better understanding of the link between improved energy efficency and the growth of the economy.  This is a macro view of the rebound effect.
• build better understanding of how reducing electricity demand in a local area can impact current and future investment needs of the Distribution Network Operators (& then what regulatory changes are needed to capture all the economic benefits)