Next-generation energy system model to create a local building decarbonisation strategy
Project ID: 2228cd1246 (You will need this ID for your application)
Under Offer
Research Theme: Energy and Decarbonisation
UCL Lead department: Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources
Lead Supervisor: Paul Dodds
Project Summary:
Energy systems models are used to identify national decarbonisation pathways to ensure that national climate plans are feasible and coherent. Many local climate plans, in contrast, are not feasible. At present, energy system models cannot be used to produce credible local decarbonisation pathways due to a lack of detailed local data. Yet there is a need to provide information to local authorities to enable them to create local climate plans that are consistent with national goals and are based on detailed and accurate information about their area.
This project aims to take the first steps to redevelop the UK TIMES energy system model with a high enough spatial resolution to produce local decarbonisation pathways. You will use information from a digital twin of the UK building stock to investigate the integration of hydrogen heating into the energy system in UK local authorities.
Your research will build on three key recent advances at UCL: (i) the development of a flexible multi-region version of UK TIMES; (ii) the development of modelling techniques to minimise the computational load of the model; and, (iii) newly available detailed information of a digital twin of the UK buildings stock from 3-D building stock models developed by the UCL Building Stock Lab.
You will gain a detailed understanding of the TIMES energy system model, which is used for decarbonisation assessments in more than 40 countries, and of building stock models. Your research will contribute to our understanding of potential roles for hydrogen to decarbonise buildings.
You will be part of the £13m EPSRC HI-ACT centre and will attend national centre meetings, offering excellent networking opportunities. You will benefit from working closely with the HI-ACT project research team, UK TIMES team and Building Stock Lab team at UCL throughout your PhD.