About

T-ENDURE

Thermal ENergy Demand in the URban Environment (T-ENDURE) Project

 

Thermal ENergy Demand in the URban Environment (T-ENDURE) Project is a collaboration between the University of Edinburgh and Shanghai Jiao Tong University – funded by the SJTU-UoE Joint Seed Fund 2023-24.

Brief:

Thermal energy demand (building heating and cooling) accounts for more than one third of the global energy consumption, and is expected to be increasing along with global climate change, i.e. increasing temperatures and more frequent extreme weather events, as well as urban induced warming.

In China and the UK, governments have set ambitious targets to achieving net-zero energy supply by 2060 and 2050 respectively. However, a technological step change has to be made to meet these targets, which cannot and should not be studied in isolation from the expected socioeconomic impacts. While China and the UK have distinct energy demands, especially in the domestic sector, they face similar challenges in their pathways to decarbonise the heating and cooling demand.

This project aims to make a comparative study of thermal energy demand in the two countries as they transit towards net-zero, considering the effect of climate change and extreme weather events on the energy demand within the built environment, and focusing specifically on the impact on citizens near or within the spectrum of fuel poverty.

The project lays the foundations of a permanent SJTU-UoE Virtual Research Group for Net-Zero Urban Energy, involving more research staff from the two institutions and covering a broader area of research into energy in the built environment. It is our vision that the Virtual Research Group will become the vehicle for further joint research in this field.