Identifying determinants of energy use in the UK nondomestic stock, Improving Energy Efficiency

Policy measures that address the role of non-residential buildings in national carbon targets require building stock energy models for interpreting data, the development of effective evidence based policies and for monitoring their actual impact; and such models have an important role in national data resources. This paper describes the UK nondomestic building stock model developed by the Carbon Reduction in Buildings (CaRB) project and other research on the nondomestic stock. Models need to be able to deal with the extreme heterogeneity of the nondomestic stock and to be well grounded in empirical data. The CaRB model is based on energy consumption data from detailed surveys of some 740 premises and various sources of floorspace data and accurately predicts total national gas and electricity consumption. To provide better information on the determinants of nondomestic energy use and how these may be changing over time, additional studies in the CaRB project have focussed on changes in the stock energy use over the past decade, and the influence of climate, overnight lighting and air conditioning. 1. Background The need for information on the built stoc