The Net Zero transition: How does Net Zero impact future energy use and indoor air quality in UK homes?

The aims of this project, conducted in close partnership with the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), are i) to investigate home characteristics and energy use (gas, oil, biomass) in the UK; ii) to enhance and evaluate our existing indoor/outdoor air quality models for use in the UK; iii) to utilize the models in ii) to assess the impact/benefits on indoor air quality and human exposure from changes to indoor sources of cooking and heating, associated with UK policy towards Net Zero.

New UK-scale indoor air quality model will be developed to estimate the indoor concentrations of NOX and PM2.5 and the major chemical components of PM2.5. This new model will be based in the first instance, upon an existing indoor air quality model for London Homes (a dynamic mass balance and random forest models) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) physical models (Energy Plus and CONTAM models).

Regarding the model evaluation, this project use results from and contribute to experiments to evaluate the model for London within the WellHome project and will have access to detailed outdoor air pollution (now and in 2030/40 and 50) from our CMAQ-urban model, via a NIHR funded project. This work will deliver a comprehensive assessment of UK domestic housing stock. It will also give us better methods to identify the important roles of both characteristics of outdoor aerosols (e.g chemical composition and size) and homes (e.g energy use, ventilation and building types) in air quality modelling. In addition, it will advance our knowledge of the outdoor and indoor transformation of fine particles and will help to provide a full picture of the interactions between climate change polices and indoor air quality.