Brenda Boardman

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Brenda Boardman

MBE
Born1943 (age 79–80) [1]
CitizenshipBritish
Alma mater Open University, University of Sussex
Known for Fuel poverty policy
SpouseJohn Boardman
Children2
AwardsMBE (1998); Melchett Medal (1998); BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour Power list (2020)
Scientific career
Institutions University of Sussex, St Hilda's College (University of Oxford)
Thesis Economic, Social and Technical Considerations for Fuel Poverty Policy
Academic advisorsJohn Chesshire & Gordon MacKerron

Brenda Boardman MBE (born 1943) is a research fellow at University of Oxford and a campaigner against fuel poverty. She provided the evidence and theory base for measuring the energy inefficiency of houses, coined the term 'affordable warmth' [2] and has influenced UK government policy in this area.

Contents

Career

The overall focus of Boardman's research can be described as how to reduce demand for energy across the UK economy, and particularly the built environment, through using more energy-efficient homes and appliances.

After leaving school, Boardman travelled around the world for two and a half years. This experience had a profound effect on the subsequent course of her life. [3] She worked for the Society for Cooperative Dwellings between 1973 and 1976 which gave her experience of house building and its funding. She started an Open University degree in 1974 concentrating on sociology and technology and graduated with a first-class degree. [4] She was subsequently employed at the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex. She started her doctoral research in 1983, [3] completing it in 1988 and thereafter worked as a consultant from home through her network of contacts until 1991. Her research brought together information from physics, building engineering, human physiology, economics and sociology for a novel broad view of fuel poverty. The major conclusion was that energy-inefficient housing stock was the fundamental reason for fuel poverty. [4]

In 1984, Boardman was the author of The Cost of Warmth, a discussion paper from the National Right to Fuel Campaign. It included a Cost of Warmth Index equation that included factors to account for individual homes and personal circumstances. This showed that the cost of maintaining one warm room in an energy inefficient house could be four times that of heating an entire energy-efficient house. The discussion paper reported that although the UK government spent £1.4 billion as subsidy for heating the poorest UK households, only £20 million was allocated to improvements to buildings that would have improved heating efficiency and given long-term cost savings. [5] [4] The index was included in UK government discussion on policy to support low-income households. [6] Since then, UK government policy has developed and made progress with the issues around fuel poverty.

UK Home Performance Rating Charts UKHomePerformanceRatingChartsVertical.png
UK Home Performance Rating Charts

Boardman was especially interested in fuel poverty and how energy is used in low-income homes. [7] She developed the first technical definition of fuel poverty during her doctoral research and it was presented in 1991 in her book Fuel Poverty: From Cold Homes to Affordable Warmth. [2] [4] It involved the ratio of energy cost to household income to achieve a satisfactory household heating regime, which she termed 'affordable warmth'. This equation was used by the UK government to inform policy for over 20 years until revised by the Hills Review [8] for use in England, although it continued to be used by governments in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland for at least another decade. [9]

Boardman also discussed a link between global warming and fuel poverty in her book as a further reason for needing to have energy-efficient homes. Cold houses use energy inefficiently and thus cause unnecessary carbon dioxide emissions. [4] This link continued to be another theme in her work. [10]

Boardman has worked at the University of Oxford since 1991. [11] She was initially employed in a post on energy efficiency funded by Powergen in the university's new Environmental Change Unit and also appointed as a senior research fellow at St Hilda's College. [4] In 1993 she began the first of several DECADE (Domestic Equipment and Carbon Dioxide Emissions]) projects funded by industry, the UK government and the European Commission, developing a model for energy use by the UK's domestic appliances. The outcomes were adopted into UK government policy and have been developed further subsequently. [4] The energy efficiency labelling on UK appliances is one of the outcomes. [12] For some time her research, therefore, moved away from fuel poverty and into the efficiency of appliances. She eventually became head of the Lower Carbon Futures team and a co-director of the UK Energy Research Centre in the Environmental Change Institute of the University of Oxford. She retired in 2008 but continues as an Emeritus Research Fellow. [7]

In parallel with her academic career, Boardman has led campaigns related to fuel poverty. From 1987 to 1991 she chaired the National Right to Fuel Campaign, having been a member since 1984. [4]

She was a trustee of the Chesshire–Lehmann fund that between 2010 and 2016 supported research or evaluation into the relationship between fuel poverty and energy efficiency. [13]

Boardman is a visiting professor at the University of Exeter. [7] In 2021, she was the guest in an episode of The Life Scientific on BBC Radio 4. [3]

Publications

Books, reports, scientific articles and pamphlets that Boardman has authored or co-authored include:

Awards

Personal life

Boardman was not able to go to university immediately after she left school because of a misunderstanding about the date of one A-level examination, resulting in her not taking it. Instead, she took a secretarial course. This enabled her to work while she travelled around the world in the 1960s. [3] She married John Boardman and they had two children. They lived in Lewes from the mid-1970s but the family moved to Oxford in 1991 once she was employed at University of Oxford. [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Energy conservation</span> Reducing energy consumption

Energy conservation is the effort to reduce wasteful energy consumption by using fewer energy services. This can be done by using energy more effectively or changing one's behavior to use less service. Energy conservation can be achieved through efficient energy use, which has some advantages, including a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a smaller carbon footprint, as well as cost, water, and energy savings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Water heating</span> Thermodynamic process that uses energy sources to heat water

Water heating is a heat transfer process that uses an energy source to heat water above its initial temperature. Typical domestic uses of hot water include cooking, cleaning, bathing, and space heating. In industry, hot water and water heated to steam have many uses.

National Energy Action (NEA) is a fuel poverty charity that works to eradicate fuel poverty and campaigns for greater investment in energy efficiency to help those who are poor or vulnerable gain affordable heat.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cogeneration</span> Simultaneous generation of electricity and useful heat

Cogeneration or combined heat and power (CHP) is the use of a heat engine or power station to generate electricity and useful heat at the same time.

The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program is a United States federal social services program first established in 1981 and funded annually through Congressional appropriations. The mission of LIHEAP is to assist low income households, particularly those with the lowest incomes that pay a high proportion of household income for home energy, primarily in meeting their immediate home energy needs. The program, part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is funded by grants appropriated from the federal government.

Renewable heat is an application of renewable energy referring to the generation of heat from renewable sources; for example, feeding radiators with water warmed by focused solar radiation rather than by a fossil fuel boiler. Renewable heat technologies include renewable biofuels, solar heating, geothermal heating, heat pumps and heat exchangers. Insulation is almost always an important factor in how renewable heating is implemented.

A household is said to be in fuel poverty when its members cannot afford to keep adequately warm at a reasonable cost, given their income. The term is mainly used in the UK, Ireland and New Zealand, although discussions on fuel poverty are increasing across Europe, and the concept also applies everywhere in the world where poverty and cold may be present.

Domestic housing in the United Kingdom presents a possible opportunity for achieving the 20% overall cut in UK greenhouse gas emissions targeted by the Government for 2010. However, the process of achieving that drop is proving problematic given the very wide range of age and condition of the UK housing stock.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Energy policy of the United Kingdom</span> Overview of the energy policy of the United Kingdom

The energy policy of the United Kingdom refers to the United Kingdom's efforts towards reducing energy intensity, reducing energy poverty, and maintaining energy supply reliability. The United Kingdom has had success in this, though energy intensity remains high. There is an ambitious goal to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in future years, but it is unclear whether the programmes in place are sufficient to achieve this objective. Regarding energy self-sufficiency, UK policy does not address this issue, other than to concede historic energy security is currently ceasing to exist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Energy poverty</span> Lack of access to energy services such as electricity and heating

Energy poverty is lack of access to modern energy services. It refers to the situation of large numbers of people in developing countries and some people in developed countries whose well-being is negatively affected by very low consumption of energy, use of dirty or polluting fuels, and excessive time spent collecting fuel to meet basic needs. Today, 759 million people lack access to consistent electricity and 2.6 billion people use dangerous and inefficient cooking systems. It is inversely related to access to modern energy services, although improving access is only one factor in efforts to reduce energy poverty. Energy poverty is distinct from fuel poverty, which primarily focuses solely on the issue of affordability.

Energy Saving Trust is a British organization devoted to promoting energy efficiency, energy conservation, and the sustainable use of energy, thereby reducing carbon dioxide emissions and helping to prevent man-made climate change. It was founded in the United Kingdom as a government-sponsored initiative in 1992, following the global Earth Summit.

In conservation and energy economics, the rebound effect is the reduction in expected gains from new technologies that increase the efficiency of resource use, because of behavioral or other systemic responses. These responses diminish the beneficial effects of the new technology or other measures taken. A definition of the rebound effect is provided by Thiesen et al. (2008) as, “the rebound effect deals with the fact that improvements in efficiency often lead to cost reductions that provide the possibility to buy more of the improved product or other products or services.” A classic example from this perspective is a driver who substitutes a vehicle with a fuel-efficient version, only to reap the benefits of its lower operating expenses to commute longer and more frequently."

Efficient energy use, sometimes simply called energy efficiency, is the process of reducing the amount of energy required to provide products and services. For example, insulating a building allows it to use less heating and cooling energy to achieve and maintain a thermal comfort. Installing light-emitting diode bulbs, fluorescent lighting, or natural skylight windows reduces the amount of energy required to attain the same level of illumination compared to using traditional incandescent light bulbs. Improvements in energy efficiency are generally achieved by adopting a more efficient technology or production process or by application of commonly accepted methods to reduce energy losses.

Home Energy Saver is a set of on–line resources developed by the U.S. Department of Energy at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory intended to help consumers and professional energy analysts, analyze, reduce, and manage home energy use.

In the United Kingdom, there are different definitions of fuel poverty. In England, a household is considered to be in fuel poverty if they are living in a property with an energy efficiency rating of band D or below, and if after heating their home to an adequate level, they fall below the official poverty line. In Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, the definition of fuel poverty is whether a household needs to spend more than 10% of their income on energy bills to heat their home to an adequate level of warmth.To be considered adequate, the main living room needs to be 21 °C (70 °F), and other occupied rooms 18 °C (64 °F) during the daytime, with lower temperatures allowed at night.

Green affordable housing is reasonably priced housing that incorporates sustainable features. The phenomenon has become increasingly common in the United States with the adoption of state and local policies that favor or require green building practices for publicly owned or funded buildings. Potential benefits of green affordable housing include lower energy cost burden and improved health. One challenge to green affordable housing is the tendency to overlook long-term benefits in the face of higher upfront cost. The challenge for green housing advocates is to see to the life cycle cost of the building. Many affordable housing projects already find it a challenge to raise capital to finance basic affordable housing. Green affordable housing has taken form in traditionally wooden homes and most recently with 'upcycling' shipping containers

The Green Deal was a UK government policy initiative that gave homeowners, landlords and tenants the opportunity to pay for energy efficient home improvements through the savings on their energy bills from 2012 to 2015. At the heart of the Green Deal was the rule that savings on bills would exceed the cost of the work. By meeting this 'Golden Rule', consumers were able to receive energy savings without direct cost. Consumers then paid back the cost of such improvements through the expected savings in their energy bills. However, there is no guarantee that the eventual savings made by consumers will match the cost of the loans they take out to make the improvements and industry bodies recognised there was a risk consumers could end up out of pocket.

Help-Link UK Limited is a central heating firm in the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sust-it</span>

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Household energy insecurity refers to a household's inability to meet its energy needs. Energy insecurity is a broad framework that includes energy burden as one of several factors in a household's ability to meet energy needs. Household energy insecurity is influenced by both internal and external factors such as energy cost, household income, housing conditions, and personal behavior. The relevance of these factors may vary by geographic region, such as country or community, and the level of development of energy infrastructure.

References

  1. ↑ Boardman, Brenda (1991). Ten years cold: lessons from a decade of fuel poverty: a summary of the research report / produced by Dr. Brenda Boardman (Report). Wellcome Collection . Retrieved 21 September 2021.
  2. 1 2 Boardman, Brenda (1991). Fuel Poverty: From Cold Homes to Affordable Warmth. Belhaven Press. p. 224. ISBN   978-1852931391.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "The Life Scientific, Brenda Boardman on making our homes energy efficient". BBC Radio 4 . UK: BBC . Retrieved 21 September 2021.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Liddell, Christine (2012). "Conversation The missed exam: Conversations with Brenda Boardman". Energy Policy. 49: 12–18. doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2012.02.018.
  5. ↑ Jones, Mike (6 March 1986). "Investing for warmth". New Scientist : 63.
  6. ↑ "Cost Of Warmth Index". House of Lords Hansard. Retrieved 21 November 2020.
  7. 1 2 3 "Dr Brenda Boardman". Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford. Retrieved 20 November 2020.
  8. ↑ Hills, John. "Final report of the Fuel Poverty Review". UK Government. Retrieved 21 November 2020.
  9. ↑ "A new definition of fuel poverty in Scotland: review of recent evidence". Scottish Government. Retrieved 21 November 2020.
  10. ↑ Boardman, Brenda (2016). "The frontiers of energy". Nature Energy. 1 (15020): 4–5. doi:10.1038/NENERGY.2015.20. OSTI   1327728. S2CID   113555241.
  11. ↑ "Brenda Boardman". EU Energy Poverty Observatory. Retrieved 21 November 2020.
  12. 1 2 "Woman's Hour Power List 2020: The List". BBC Radio 4 . UK: BBC . Retrieved 16 November 2020.
  13. ↑ "Chesshire Lehmann Fund". Chesshire Lehmann Fund. Retrieved 21 November 2020.
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