Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy

Claims about the benefits of heating controls are often biased, unsubstantiated, misleading, or incorrect. This paper presents a systematic and critical international review of the evidence for the energy saving, cost effectiveness and usability of heating controls. The focus is domestic, low-pressure hot water heating systems in temperate climates. Eleven different types of standard, advanced and smart controls are assessed plus five components and features that add smart functionality. The review retrieved over 2400 documents from on-line databases and other sources. Screening criteria and quality assurance scoring identified just 67 items, mainly from the UK and USA, which appeared to contain relevant evidence. This evidence was derived from computer modelling, field trials and full-scale experiments, and for usability, from expert evaluations and controlled assessments. The evidence was synthesised and its quality classified as very low, low, moderate or high using the GRADE system which is more commonly applied in evidence-based medicine. The energy savings of most heating controls depends strongly on whether the heating system is operated with a continuous or periodic heating pattern, as well as on the energy efficiency of the dwelling and the severity of the climate. For most control types, the quality of the evidence for energy savings was low, very low or non-existent. However, there was moderate quality evidence that, when appropriately commissioned, zonal controllers, which heat individual spaces to different temperatures at different times, could save energy compared to whole-house controllers, and that low-cost systems of this type could be cost-effective. There was moderate quality evidence that smart thermostats do not save energy compared to standard thermostats and programmers and may, in fact, increase energy demand. The usability studies focussed on general heating controls and programmable thermostats and provided high quality evidence that heating controls are difficult to use, especially by older people. However, no studies were uncovered that quantified the consequent energy penalty. There was no high quality evidence about the impact on energy demand of any of the heating controls studied, mainly because there have been no well-founded, large-scale, multi-disciplinary, multi-year field trials.

Occupancy patterns are necessary to estimate energy demand and evaluate thermal comfort in households. Because of this, many European countries are developing representative domestic schedules to replace outdated criteria. This paper evaluates the state of knowledge of UK domestic occupancy patterns and develops new domestic occupancy profiles for England. The presented research (1) characterizes methods for collecting occupancy data and inferring patterns; (2) identifies and assesses the quality of categories of occupancy patterns used in building simulation; and (3) develops updated occupancy profiles. A systematic scoping review identified social and monitoring surveys as the most deployed data-collection methods. A systematic literature review also established that the occupancy categories most frequently used in UK building simulation are (a) a family with dependent children where the parents work full time; and (b) a retired elderly couple who spend most of their time indoors. The interview sample from the English Housing Survey 2014–15 was used to map household typologies. Results show that categories (a) and (b) combined amount to only 19% of England’s households, which suggest models are over-reliant on these groups. Considering this result, the paper develops occupancy patterns for England derived from 2015 UK Time Use Survey diaries for each household typology previously identified.

Mobilizing climate finance for climate change mitigation is a crucial part of meeting the ‘well-below’ 2°C goal of the Paris Agreement. Climate finance refers to investments specifically in climate change mitigation and adaptation activities, which involve public finance and the leveraging of private finance. A large proportion of climate finance is Official Development Assistance (ODA) from OECD countries to ODA-eligible countries. The evidence shows that the largest proportion of climate finance for climate change mitigation has been channelled to the development of renewable energy, with a much smaller proportion flowing to other crucial forms of clean energy-related measures, such as demand-side management (DSM) (particularly sustainable cooling) and carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS). This forms the rationale and aim of this synthesis paper: to review the role of climate finance to develop clean energy beyond renewables. In doing so, the paper draws on practical policy and programme experiences of some donor countries, such as the UK, and Development Finance Institutions (DFIs). This paper argues that a greater amount of climate finance from OECD countries to ODA-eligible fossil fuel-intensive emerging economies and developing countries is required for sustainable cooling and CCUS, particularly in the form of technical assistance and clean energy innovation.Key policy insights Demand-side management (DSM) and carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) are underfunded in climate finance compared with the promotion of renewables.Climate finance for sustainable cooling, in particular, represents just 0.04% of total ODA, despite cooling projected to represent 13% of global emissions by 2030.Public investment in CCUS is limited at US $28 billion since 2007, despite the costs of meeting the Paris Agreement estimated to be 40-128% more expensive without CCUS.Additional climate finance for these sectors should not come at the expense of funding for renewables but should be complementary to it.

A subset of events within the UK Government Events Research Programme (ERP), developed to examine the risk of transmission of COVID-19 from attendance at events, was examined to explore the public health impact of holding mass sporting events. We used contact tracing data routinely collected through telephone interviews and online questionnaires, to describe the potential public health impact of the large sporting and cultural events on potential transmission and incidence of COVID-19. Data from the EURO 2020 matches hosted at Wembley identified very high numbers of individuals who tested positive for COVID-19 and were traced through NHS Test & Trace. This included both individuals who were potentially infectious (3036) and those who acquired their infection during the time of the Final (6376). This is in contrast with the All England Lawn Tennis Championships at Wimbledon, where there were similar number of spectators and venue capacity but there were lower total numbers of potentially infectious cases (299) and potentially acquired cases (582). While the infections associated with the EURO 2020 event may be attributed to a set of socio-cultural circumstances which are unlikely to be replicated for the forthcoming sporting season, other aspects may be important to consider including mitigations for spectators to consider such as face coverings when travelling to and from events, minimising crowding in poorly ventilated indoor spaces such as bars and pubs where people may congregate to watch events, and reducing the risk of aerosol exposure through requesting that individuals avoid shouting and chanting in large groups in enclosed spaces.

The COVID-19 pandemic provided a commercial opportunity for traders marketing a range of ultraviolet (UV) radiation products for home-use disinfection. Due to concerns about the efficacy of such products and the potential for harmful levels of UV exposure to people, a range of products were purchased from on-line trading platforms. Spectral irradiance measurements were carried out to determine whether the products could be effective against the SARS-CoV-2 virus and whether they were likely to exceed internationally agreed exposure limits. It was concluded that many of the devices were not effective and many of those that were potentially effective presented a risk to users.

Abstract The question of how to make academic research more useful to government, and frustration over its lack of obvious use, have long been the subject of policy makers’ and scholars’ attention. These have driven the global development of institutionalised links between the two communities, while also leading to a broad consensus as to why the goal is often not realised. In order to better explain the barriers, this paper takes the concept of “translation” very literally, and proposes an innovative approach, which analyses academic and policy practices using ideas from the humanities-based discipline of Translation Studies. This enables an exploration of what constitutes good translation, and in particular of the tension between keeping faith with the original material and users’ understandable emphasis on functionality. The conclusion is that while some aspect of original research content must be maintained, what this is cannot be prescribed: the appropriate equivalence between original and translation is always context-dependent. This throws the emphasis on the relational aspects of translatorial action for promoting “good translation”. The argument follows Christiane Nord in seeing the core issue as the moral one of a translator’s loyalty to original author and user, and so also of mutual trust between academics and civil servants. This raises important questions about how such trust can be cultivated, and so finally leads to an emphasis on the importance of an endeavour shared by researchers and policy makers, which recognises and respects their different environments and the work involved in creating useful meaning from scholarly research.

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) play pivotal roles in various biological functions whose dynamic structures are closely associated with many human diseases, including cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer disease. Structural investigations of IDPs typically involve a combination of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and experimental data to mitigate intrinsic biases in simulation methods. However, the high computational cost of these simulations and the limited availability of experimental data significantly restrict their applicability. Despite the recent advancements in structure prediction for structured proteins, understanding the conformational properties of IDPs remains challenging, partly due to the poor conservation of disordered protein sequences and the scarcity of experimental characterization. Here, IDPFold is introduced as a method capable of generating conformational ensembles for IDPs directly from their sequences using fine-tuned diffusion models. IDPFold eliminates the reliance on multiple sequence alignments (MSA) or experimental data, offering a more detailed characterization of structural features in IDP ensembles. Evaluated across 27 IDP systems, IDPFold achieves Rg error of -0.06 and an RMSD of 0.65 ppm on Cα secondary chemical shifts with experimental values, significantly better than all existing generative deep learning approaches. IDPFold can be used to elucidate the sequence-disorder-function paradigm of IDPs.

In this paper, we explore how effectively renewable generation can be used to meet a country’s electricity demands. We consider a range of different generation mixes and capacities, as well as the use of energy storage. First, we introduce a new open-source model that uses hourly wind speed and solar irradiance data to estimate the output of a renewable electricity generator at a specific location. Then, we construct a case study of the Great Britain (GB) electricity system as an example using historic hourly demand and weather data. Three specific sources of renewable generation are considered: offshore wind, onshore wind, and solar PV. Li-ion batteries are considered as the form of electricity storage. We demonstrate that the ability of a renewables-based electricity system to meet expected demand profiles can be increased by optimising the ratio of onshore wind, offshore wind and solar PV. Additionally, we show how including Li-ion battery storage can reduce overall generation needs, therefore lowering system costs. For the GB system, we explore how the residual load that would need to be met with other forms of flexibility, such as dispatchable generation sources or demand-side response, varies for different ratios of renewable generation and storage.

UK policy concern about the value and funding of Higher Education has focussed on the intrinsic and instrumental impacts of education. Typically, returns to education are identified by narrow economic metrics, like earnings. However, policy makers recognize the need for wider measures of welfare. Consequently, contemporaneous relationships with subjective well-being (SWB) have been explored. In this paper the effects of higher education on SWB are mapped through time. The results show positive effects in the first year at university that dissipate afterwards. Intrinsic benefits from education remain but get eroded implying increased stress from loan financed education with transition to a more instrumental perspective on education.

<ns3:p> <ns3:bold>Background:</ns3:bold> With the aim of making it easier for researchers to produce policy-relevant research, the UK Government now requires all departments and arms-length bodies to publish annually-updated statements of their evidence needs, called ‘Areas of Research Interest’ (ARIs). We describe how ARIs are produced, and how they are used to support this aim. </ns3:p> <ns3:p/> <ns3:p> <ns3:bold>Aims and objectives:</ns3:bold> In this paper we offer a description of ARIs and their development by UK governmental departments, and an assessment of how different stakeholders, including academia and funders, have responded to or otherwise used the ARIs. </ns3:p> <ns3:p/> <ns3:p> <ns3:bold>Key conclusions:</ns3:bold> ARIs are a mechanism for organisations to share their research interests with external audiences in the form of a published document. In addition to this primary aim, they also have a much broader set of uses, including connecting departments with each other and helping intermediaries shape engagement plans. All groups would benefit from more robust evidence to choose effective engagement mechanisms, and more can be done to make the ARIs discoverable and useable. Overall, the ARIs are a useful tool to illuminate, and begin to connect different parts of the research-policy system. </ns3:p>

The COVID-19 pandemic increased sales of portable UV-C devices as a means of inactivating the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Research suggests that excessive UV-C exposure to the eyes and skin can lead to side-effects, primarily photokeratitis and erythema, but these findings are limited to case studies. This study explores self-reported side-effects of UV-C devices by collating five waves of UK consumer survey data from April 2020-December 2021 (N = 26 864). 30%-46% of owners report a side-effect after using a device claiming to emit UV-C. However, detailed analysis of Wave 4 data (N = 309) highlights inconsistencies between reported and plausible side-effect(s) associated with skin or eye exposure from UV-C devices. Alternative explanations are considered, namely that the reported side-effect(s) were psychosomatic or misattributed to direct exposure of UV-C radiation. Data regarding awareness of warnings about device side-effect(s) supports the misattribution explanation. For risk assessment purposes, limited reliable information about specific irritation or injury to the eye and skin was found from self-reporting surveys. To optimize future data collection, we recommend addressing recall errors by: reducing the period under investigation, supplementing responses with empirical measures, and incentivizing respondents to provide accurate information about the make and model of the UV-C device.

In fields like climate and development, where the challenges being addressed can be described as “wicked”, learning is key to successful programming. Useful practical and theoretical work is being undertaken to better understand the role of reflexive learning in bringing together different knowledge to address complex problems like climate change. Through a review of practical cases and learning theories commonly used in the areas of resilience, climate change adaptation and environmental management, this article: (i) reviews the theories that have shaped approaches to reflexive learning in large, highly-distributed climate change and resilience-building programmes for development; and (ii) conducts a comparative learning review of key challenges and lessons emerging from early efforts to promote and integrate reflexive learning processes in programmes of this nature. Using a case study approach, the authors focus on early efforts made in four large, inter-related (or nested) programmes to establish, integrate and sustain learning processes and systems. Eight themes emerged from the review and are considered from the perspective of learning programmes as emergent communities of practice. By investigating how these themes play out in the nested programming, the paper contributes to the limited existing body of evidence on learning in large climate change programmes and identifies areas where future efforts might focus.

Abstract Key decision-making organisations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the European Commission (EC) have started to focus on the industrial and economic implications of advanced materials (AMs). Internationally, there is a strong push for a sustainable and circular economy in which 'safety by design', recyclability and re-use will be high on the agenda. It is important material scientists, industry, and regulators consider how to work together to support the safe use of AMs. In 2021, DEFRA, HSE Science Division, NPL, UK HSA and BSI held an online workshop with industry experts, materials scientists and regulators to create a UK knowledge sharing community on the safe exploitation of AMs. This first workshop assessed the level of interest in creating an UK AM knowledge sharing community focussing on the application of safe by design for safer adoption of AMs. The participants concluded that any definition of AM related to a novel material property may be necessary but would make it difficult to use from a practical regulatory perspective. A second event is planned for early 2023 to share views on the benefits and pitfalls of the safe commercialisation of AMs; including the societal benefits that may arise and the potential obstacles to the wider adoption of these new materials. These events are being attended by organisations developing AMs, those manufacturing and using AMs, and also health and safety experts and regulators. The poster will summarise the outcomes of the two workshops.