Energy Management in UK Non-Domestic Buildings - a New Perspective to Provoke Reduced Carbon Emissions

Politicians, industry and the public generally accept the need for energy consumption to be cut to deliver climate change mitigation measures essential for us to avoid climate disaster. For non-domestic fuel users current energy policy has attempted to drive this through rational economic responses to energy cost pressures. This reliance on voluntary action has created an “Energy Inconsistency”, that is a marked difference between energy opportunities that have been proven technically viable, financially rational and retrofit feasible and those actually adopted. Other factors must therefore be involved to influence what appear to be simple carbon and cost saving opportunities. This paper presents a new approach to energy efficiency and consumption in non-domestic buildings, viewing attitudes and behaviours of building owners and tenants as the key driver of energy consumption. A new framework is proposed as a method to examine the impact of building ownership on the tenants’ and owners’ abilities to improve energy efficiency and consumption and identify opportunities to overcome the barriers inherent in these ownership structures.

[1]  T. Dixon.  Urban land and property ownership patterns in the UK: trends and forces for change☆ , 2009 .

[2]  Peter Lund,et al.  Energy and climate change , 2018 .

[3]  P. Nijkamp,et al.  Energy Saving by Firms, Decision-Making, Barriers and Policies , 2001 .

[4]  M. J. Kelly.  Energy efficiency, resilience to future climates and long-term sustainability: the role of the built environment , 2010, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

[5]  M. Kolokotroni,et al.  Building communities: reducing energy use in tenanted commercial property , 2012 .

[6]  Lorraine Whitmarsh,et al.  Reorienting Climate Change Communication for Effective Mitigation , 2009 .

[7]  Sophie A. Nicholson-Cole,et al.  Barriers perceived to engaging with climate change among the UK public and their policy implications , 2007 .

[8]  Stephen J. DeCanio,et al.  Barriers within firms to energy-efficient investments , 1993 .

[9]  Behavioral Assumptions Underlying Energy Efficiency Programs for Businesses , 2009 .

[10]  Susan Bright.  Carbon reduction and commercial leases in the UK , 2010 .

[11]  Baizhan Li,et al.  Urbanisation and its impact on building energy consumption and efficiency in China , 2009 .

[12]  J. Schleich,et al.  Beyond case studies: Barriers to energy efficiency in commerce and the services sector , 2008 .

[13]  Implications of Ownership in the U.S. and U.K.: An Exploration of ENERGY STAR ® Buildings & the Energy Efficiency Accreditation Scheme , 2008 .

[14]  Kathryn B. Janda,et al.  Buildings don't use energy: people do , 2011 .

[15]  Kathryn B. Janda,et al.  Building communities and social potential: Between and beyond organizations and individuals in commercial properties , 2014 .