Funded by a large grant from the European
Commission, Dr Boardman established the team that developed a model of
domestic electricity use called DECADE – Domestic Equipment and Carbon
Dioxide Emissions – designed to provide policy-makers with a tool to
evaluate energy efficiency measures. One of its early findings was that
domestic lighting uses twice as much of the national energy budget as
previously thought. Now even Prime Minister Gordon Brown is calling for
the replacement of incandescent bulbs with low energy alternatives.
‘It’s a good example of academic research having a major effect on what
the government does, and what utilities do’, says Dr Boardman.
‘Lighting is a major component of peak electricity demand – it
determines how much capacity is needed in a system. The utilities that
were forced to invest in energy efficiency chose to focus on lighting.’
Technology
is only part of the solution, however: social and psychological factors
have as big a part to play. Recognising this, the group adopted the
name Lower Carbon Futures in preference to its previous title, the
Energy Efficiency Programme. ‘We increasingly recognised that
efficiency is a contributor to the debate, but it isn’t necessarily the
right answer’, says Dr Boardman. ‘You can have very much more
energy-efficient fridges, but if they’re twice the size they use more
energy.’ In its influential 2005 report The 40% House
(www.40percent.org.uk), the Lower Carbon Futures team set out measures
that could reduce emissions from the entire domestic housing stock of
the UK by 60 per cent by 2050. The report acknowledges that people are
likely to own even more appliances then, but argues that a combination
of low- or zero-carbon technologies (such as solar panels), good
building standards, efficient design and ‘energy-conscious usage’ by
homeowners could be enough to compensate. A new project, Building
Market Transformation, is now extending the analysis to non-residential
buildings with funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council and the Carbon Trust.
The main focus of Dr Brenda Boardman's research has been on how to achieve a reduction in the demand for energy across the UK economy. Dr Boardman recently stepped down as leader ofthe Lower Carbon Futures team.
Very recently Dr Boardman has pushed things even further. In a report for Friends of the Earth and the Cooperative Bank, Home Truths,
she set out a policy framework for reducing domestic demand by 80 per
cent. ‘The science requires us to make bigger reductions’, she says.
Launched at the House of Commons on 27 November 2007, the report for
the first time includes the cost of policies that would make all of
Britain’s 25.8 million homes energy efficient: £12.9 billion a year for
ten years, or 1 per cent of GDP. ‘It’s huge!’, she agrees. ‘But it
brings home to people the reality of what is needed.’
Even an
idealist like Dr Boardman recognises the difficulties. ‘How do you get
25 million homes to be energy-efficient, when in the more than 30 years
since the 1973 oil shock we haven’t really done much at all?’ she says.
‘What will motivate you and me to make these changes? I do think the
British public are getting ready to respond. But they are unsure about
what to do or whether they will do it.’ She is only half-joking when
she says she hopes the new energy performance certificates that people
will shortly have to obtain before selling their homes will make
whether you have an A or a G rating a topic of dinner party
conversation. ‘I’m in the process of proposing to government that
gradually, just as we’ve done with fridges, there is a minimum standard
below which you can’t sell your house.’
Even more radically, she
is in favour of the idea of personal carbon allowances, which would
give each individual a maximum annual tonnage of carbon to cover their
purchases of electricity, gas, petrol and air travel – and after that
they would have to pay. ‘If you know you’ve got one tonne [of carbon
allowance] and that you’re using it up too fast, you’ve got something
to respond to’, she says. ‘Are you going to give something up, or are
you just going to pay up? What’s needed is to get this framework in our
heads. It’s all part of the argument about convenience today versus the
livelihoods of future generations, and their ability even to exist in
many parts of the world. And we’ve got to be a little bit more radical
about constraints on ourselves to benefit others.’
Dr Boardman’s
uncompromising stance has not won her friends everywhere, but Dr Diana
Liverman, Director of the ECI, praises her passion. ‘Her commitment not
only to reducing emissions but to the eradication of fuel poverty has
inspired many young students’, she says. ‘She’s a great team leader,
she articulated many of these issues long before they were popular, and
the quality of the group’s work is one of the foundations upon which
the ECI’s international reputation rests.’
