Achieving Energy Demand Reductions through Integrated Energy Demand Models for Transport and Residential Sector

Project ID: 2228cd1256 (You will need this ID for your application)

Research Theme: Energy and Decarbonisation

UCL Lead department: Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA)

Department Website

Lead Supervisor: Chen Zhong

Project Summary:

The UK’s net-zero strategy involves a shift to electric vehicles in transportation and the adoption of heat pumps for heating. These changes are essential for reducing emissions but will pose new challenges due to the significant increase in electricity demand they will generate. It is not clear whether the energy supply side can meet this demand without increasing emissions. As a result, achieving net-zero in the UK will heavily rely on reducing energy demand and enhancing energy efficiency. Integrated modelling of energy demand from multiple end-uses and developing accurate simulations to test various intervention scenarios and assess their effectiveness will be of increasing importance. However, despite the increasing integration of energy and transport systems, state-of-art models for energy and transport demand remain separate. The goal of the proposed project is to address this gap by developing integrated energy demand models for transport and residential sector.

The project will be jointly supervised by Dr. Esra Suel and Dr. Chen Zhong, both affiliated with the Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at UCL. The PhD student will be based at UCL CASA, where they will benefit from CASA’s extensive network of industry of government partners including collaborations with Transport for London and the Arup City Modelling Lab. Additionally, there will be many opportunities to engage with other PhD students within the department and the broader Bartlett community. They will also have the chance to closely interest with the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solution (CREDS) and its follow up Energy Demand Research Centre as part of the supervisory teams’ wider research programme.

We are looking for candidates with backgrounds in transport, energy, urban modelling, or quantitative fields such as computer science, data science, mathematics, or physics with an interest in the domain of transport and energy modelling.