Energy management in UK non-domestic buildings—A new perspective to provoke reduced carbon emissions

Abstract

Politicians, industry and the public generally accept the need for energy consumption to be cut to deliver climate change mitigation measures essential for us to avoid climate disaster. For non-domestic fuel users current energy policy has attempted to drive this through rational economic responses to energy cost pressures. This reliance on voluntary action has created an “Energy Inconsistency”, that is a marked difference between energy opportunities that have been proven technically viable, financially rational and retrofit feasible and those actually adopted. Other factors must therefore be involved to influence what appear to be simple carbon and cost saving opportunities. This paper presents a new approach to energy efficiency and consumption in non-domestic buildings, viewing attitudes and behaviours of building owners and tenants as the key driver of energy consumption. A new framework is proposed as a method to examine the impact of building ownership on the tenants’ and owners’ abilities to improve energy efficiency and consumption and identify opportunities to overcome the barriers inherent in these ownership structures.