This interdisciplinary PhD-by-practice examines how people construct comfort within their interior spaces through the study of objects, structures, membranes, situations and circumstances between clothes and the building skin. (In)tangible efficiencies of comfort and movement are problematised in this research. It provides new insights into the desire-lines of comfort, which are the habitual routines and interactions that individual’s practice to control their everyday energy use. The audience for this research includes academics, professionals, and those interested in how objects and circumstances influence physical, physiological and psychological interior comfort. The research methods that were applied included novel experimental interior design techniques of data gathering, demonstrated in the GYRO, AMNIOTIC SAC and COSY workshops. Co-researcher responses were generated in text, image and three-dimensional form. These immersive workshops examined specific interior sites, including: the conceptualisation of a product based structure that utilised gyroscopic principles; the prenatal spatial interior of the amniotic sac membranes were studied to posit how this space of origin influences our lifelong comfort desires. In addition, a range of lifecycle scenarios were created to facilitate the understanding of comfort through various objects and circumstances e.g. a cot, pram, loftbed, train, wheelchair, lounge, ambulance, and coffin. Analysis of the data evidenced representations and patterns of comfort desire-lines. Relationships with animate and inanimate objects were identified, connecting with differing dependent and autonomous comfort aspirations. The outcomes of this research can aid investigations into energy use, relocating efficiency discourses from the building skin to interior interstitial space.

Energy conservation can mitigate significant issues such as climate change and fuel poverty, yet the determinants of this behaviour are poorly understood. It is important to understand the antecedents of energy conservation in order to effectively stimulate this behaviour in society. Traditional models have focused on normative and intentional processes to explain environmental behaviour, but have proven largely unsuccessful for predicting energy use. Considering that day-to-day energy behaviour is likely to be habitual and context dependent, models such as the Comprehensive Action Determination Model (CADM, Klöckner & Blöbaum, 2010), which have integrated these factors with more traditional antecedents of behaviour, may better account for people’s actions. The early research in this thesis tests the application of this model to energy saving behaviour using a mixed-methods approach. Findings show that such a model is suitable to account for the drivers of energy behaviour, particularly because of the important role of habits and situational influences on this behaviour. Although this model can successfully predict daily energy behaviours that involve the routine curtailment of household energy use, one-off energy efficiency investment behaviours are unlikely to be determined by the variables considered by the CADM. That is, these behaviours may be more dependent on people’s understanding of the energy consumption in their household, or their energy literacy. Therefore, the second part of this thesis investigates the cognitive processes that inform conscious energy judgements to explore the antecedents of this energy literacy. The studies in this thesis uncover an unprecedented variety of energy judgement heuristics in this decision-making process, and these heuristics are further investigated, again using various methods. This thesis concludes that, to maximally facilitate energy conservation, the habitual and situational antecedents of energy saving behaviour, as captured in such frameworks as the CADM, need to be considered alongside the cognitive processes that shape people’s energy literacy when designing effective energy conservation interventions that target both routine and non-routine actions.

Research on interventions aimed to promote energy savings has shown support for direct feedback using in-home displays (IHDs) to reduce energy consumption. These displays are electronic devices that provide real-time energy information and are emerging as an effective tool to communicate with people about their energy consumption. How feedback is presented to people and how they understand the meaning of such feedback largely depends on the design of the display, yet there are relatively few studies that investigate the way in which the display can best be designed to present energy information and motivate energy-saving behaviour. Further, even though there is a wide range of variations in the visual presentation of feedback, there is a lack of focus on the process of optimising the IHD design. This thesis aims to address the need for designing IHDs at the display component level, by examining three types of display design (numerical displays, analogue displays using speedometer dials, and ambient displays using emotional faces) in both laboratory-based computer-simulated experiments and field-based experiments: participants’ abilities to detect changes in energy information shown on the computer-simulated displays were measured by means of accuracy rate and response time, and their subjective preferences for display types were assessed against experimental data; live energy data were displayed using the three design types in a student residence at the University of Bath to see how they would influence energy-use behaviour. Results from the laboratory experiments demonstrated that both accuracy rate and response time for seeing changes in the information displayed were strongly associated with the type of display design. Participants preferred numerical display and were better at detecting changes in information with this display than with the other two. Conversely, the student residence experiments showed that when participants’ attention was divided in a household setting, there was no difference in energy consumption among experimental groups who received information from any of the three display types. However, these experimental groups used significantly less energy compared with control groups, who had no displays installed. It was concluded that 1) the mere presence of a display device could influence people’s behaviour, regardless of the type of display design, people’s preferences or the level of user engagement with the display, although there was a strong indication that the ambient design worked better than the other two designs at an arbitrary statistical significance level of 0.95, and 2) subjective preferences and computer-simulated studies are poor guides to the actual performance of IHDs in real-world settings. This work helps establish how IHDs can be designed and the influence that they may have on people’s energy-consumption behaviour. It also contributes to the literature of exploring people’s perceptibility of energy information. The method used is replicable and can be applied in similar studies on energy display design. Lastly, the improved understanding gained through this work will facilitate the development of effective smart meter display technology that may help people adopt conscious energy behaviour in the long term.

Humanity is facing a series of challenges, including climate change, biodiversity loss, decreasing availability of cheap fossil fuel energy and social inequality that, when taken together, constitute a sustainability crisis. Agricultural systems are vitally important for the survival of humanity and must be moved towards greater sustainability. In Vietnam, the challenges facing the agriculture sector are immediate and pressing. These challenges include the need to improve the livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers, improve food safety and protect already heavily burdened ecosystems. In response to these challenges, a number of alternative agriculture approaches, including safe vegetable production and organic farming have emerged. While the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides are not permitted in certified organic agriculture, the requirements for safe vegetable production are not nearly as stringent. Chemical fertilizers and some low toxicity pesticides are allowed in safe vegetable production as long as pesticide residues are below proscribed limits. This research assesses the contributions that safe vegetable production and organic agriculture are making to the development of more sustainable agroecosystems in Vietnam. Organic production is still in early stages of development, with the majority of the projects directed towards production for export. Safe vegetables in contrast are produced primarily for the domestic market and demand is driven by consumer concerns over excessive pesticide use in conventional vegetable production. A sustainability assessment that explores the effect that safe vegetable production is having on eight major criteria for sustainability is applied in Cu Chi District, Ho Chi Minh City. Research methods included semi-structured interviews and group discussions with safe vegetable farmers together with interviews of other key actors from the agricultural sector in Vietnam. Along with the goal of protecting human health, farmers are interested in safe vegetable production because of improved economic returns made possible by reduced inputs and greater market access. While safe vegetable production is contributing to greater agroecosystem sustainability, further improvements are needed in some areas, specifically in the use of agrochemicals. There are encouraging signs in relation to pesticides, with some farmers reducing their pesticide use and moving towards less-toxic pesticides. Further movement towards sustainability could be fostered by a shift to the use of pesticides only as a last resort, a further shift from chemical to organic fertilizers, and improved capacity of farmers to experiment with and adapt safe vegetable production techniques.

The purpose of this paper is to present the barriers to energy-efficient investments (EEIs) and give reasons to their existence in the marketplace. Furthermore, this paper sets out to investigate what barriers to energy-efficient investments are present for Pilkington Floatglas AB, a firm operating in the glassmaking industry in Halmstad, Sweden. Findings suggest that five barriers act as hinders to energy-efficient investments for Pilkington, where the two most influential barriers are technological uncertainty and economic uncertainty.

Efficient energy use in restaurants Umeå Municipality wishes to combine energy issues with food control, and thus help restaurants to become more energy efficient. During March and April 2010, I visited seven restaurants and interviewed restaurant personnel about current state and application of kitchen appliances, using a checklist to make sure that the same questions were asked at all restaurants. The restaurants were all different sizes and offered different kinds of food. The study mostly focuses on energy efficiency by behaviour and not on location or technology. Almost every restaurant that was visited had the potential to improve in one or more areas, such as kitchen appliances, lamps and lighting fixtures, heating, cooling and ventilation. Concering the behavior of the personnel, it is always possible to be more careful with energy use. Based on a compilation of the responses from the checklist, action proposals were presented to each of the restaurants. The action proposals involve kitchen appliances, lamps and lighting fixtures, heating, cooling and ventilation. The food inspectors will hand out a newly created information sheet based on the obtained interview results to the restaurants in the municipality of Umeå. All restaurants can benefit from learning more about their kitchen appliances and optimize their usage. Some of the restaurants already had good knowledge of energy efficiency issues, but some didn’t have any knowledge at all. Some of the restaurants were really willing to improve their energy efficiency, whereas others didn’t care at all.

Humanity is facing a series of challenges, including climate change, biodiversity loss, decreasing availability of cheap fossil fuel energy and social inequality that, when taken together, constitute a sustainability crisis. Agricultural systems are vitally important for the survival of humanity and must be moved towards greater sustainability. In Vietnam, the challenges facing the agriculture sector are immediate and pressing. These challenges include the need to improve the livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers, improve food safety and protect already heavily burdened ecosystems. In response to these challenges, a number of alternative agriculture approaches, including safe vegetable production and organic farming have emerged. While the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides are not permitted in certified organic agriculture, the requirements for safe vegetable production are not nearly as stringent. Chemical fertilizers and some low toxicity pesticides are allowed in safe vegetable production as long as pesticide residues are below proscribed limits. This research assesses the contributions that safe vegetable production and organic agriculture are making to the development of more sustainable agroecosystems in Vietnam. Organic production is still in early stages of development, with the majority of the projects directed towards production for export. Safe vegetables in contrast are produced primarily for the domestic market and demand is driven by consumer concerns over excessive pesticide use in conventional vegetable production. A sustainability assessment that explores the effect that safe vegetable production is having on eight major criteria for sustainability is applied in Cu Chi District, Ho Chi Minh City. Research methods included semi-structured interviews and group discussions with safe vegetable farmers together with interviews of other key actors from the agricultural sector in Vietnam. Along with the goal of protecting human health, farmers are interested in safe vegetable production because of improved economic returns made possible by reduced inputs and greater market access. While safe vegetable production is contributing to greater agroecosystem sustainability, further improvements are needed in some areas, specifically in the use of agrochemicals. There are encouraging signs in relation to pesticides, with some farmers reducing their pesticide use and moving towards less-toxic pesticides. Further movement towards sustainability could be fostered by a shift to the use of pesticides only as a last resort, a further shift from chemical to organic fertilizers, and improved capacity of farmers to experiment with and adapt safe vegetable production techniques.

Energy use index (EUI) is an important measure of energy use which normalizes energy use by dividing by building area. Energy use indices and associated coefficients of variation are computed for major industry categories for electricity and natural gas use in small and medium-sized plants in the U.S. The data is very scattered with the coefficients of variation (CoV) often exceeding the average EUI for an energy type. The combined CoV from all of the industries considered, which accounts for 8,200 plants from all areas of the continental U.S., is 290%. This paper discusses EUIs and their variations based on electricity and natural gas consumption. Data from milder climates appears more scattered than that from colder climates. For example, the ratio of the average of coefficient of variations for all industry types in warm versus cold regions of the U.S. varies from 1.1 to 1.7 depending on the energy sources considered. The large data scatter indicates that predictions of energy use obtained by multiplying standard EUI data by plant area may be inaccurate and are less accurate in warmer than colder climates (warmer and colder are determined by annual average temperature weather data). Data scatter may have several explanations, including climate, plant area accounting, the influence of low cost energy and low cost buildings used in the south of the U.S. This analysis uses electricity and natural gas energy consumption and area data of manufacturing plants available in the U.S. Department of Energy’s national Industrial Assessment Center (IAC) database. The data there come from Industrial Assessment Centers which employ university engineering students, faculty and staff to perform energy assessments for small to medium-sized manufacturing plants. The nation-wide IAC program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. A collection of six general energy saving recommendations were also written with Texas manufacturing plants in mind. These are meant to provide an easily accessible starting point for facilities that wish to reduce costs and energy consumption, and are based on common recommendations from the Texas A&M University IAC program.

Energy use index (EUI) is an important measure of energy use which normalizes energy use by dividing by building area. Energy use indices and associated coefficients of variation are computed for major industry categories for electricity and natural gas use in small and medium-sized plants in the U.S. The data is very scattered with the coefficients of variation (CoV) often exceeding the average EUI for an energy type. The combined CoV from all of the industries considered, which accounts for 8,200 plants from all areas of the continental U.S., is 290%. This paper discusses EUIs and their variations based on electricity and natural gas consumption. Data from milder climates appears more scattered than that from colder climates. For example, the ratio of the average of coefficient of variations for all industry types in warm versus cold regions of the U.S. varies from 1.1 to 1.7 depending on the energy sources considered. The large data scatter indicates that predictions of energy use obtained by multiplying standard EUI data by plant area may be inaccurate and are less accurate in warmer than colder climates (warmer and colder are determined by annual average temperature weather data). Data scatter may have several explanations, including climate, plant area accounting, the influence of low cost energy and low cost buildings used in the south of the U.S. This analysis uses electricity and natural gas energy consumption and area data of manufacturing plants available in the U.S. Department of Energy's national Industrial Assessment Center (IAC) database. The data there come from Industrial Assessment Centers which employ university engineering students, faculty and staff to perform energy assessments for small to medium-sized manufacturing plants. The nation-wide IAC program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. A collection of six general energy saving recommendations were also written with Texas manufacturing plants in mind. These are meant to provide an easily accessible starting point for facilities that wish to reduce costs and energy consumption, and are based on common recommendations from the Texas A&M University IAC program.

The UK Government has set an ambitious legislative goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 % by 2050. Of the total energy used in the UK, 31 % is used in the domestic sector. In the domestic sector energy is used for space and hot water heating, lighting, appliances and cooking. Space and hot water heating make up 82 % of the total energy used in the UK domestic sector. Almost all of the energy used in the UK domestic sector originates from depletable resources. In order for the UK to reach its goal of decreasing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 % by 2050, the way energy is used in the UK domestic sector needs to change dramatically. The aim of this study is to identify opportunities for homeowners to be more sustainable without compromising their standard of living, by changing the way they use and supply energy. Homeowners’ ways of using and supplying energy today will be reviewed followed by an identification of measures that can be taken to create a more sustainable home from an energy perspective. Identified measures not only include usage of small-scale energy technologies but also application of energy efficiency measures and changes in behaviour that result in homeowners using energy in a more efficient way.   The aim has been achieved by conducting a literature review, collecting statistical data regarding energy use from the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the undertaking of a case study. The literature review revealed that air source and solar assisted heat pumps, solar photovoltaic (solar PV) and fuel cell micro combined heat and power (fuel cell mCHP) are the most promising and widely available microgeneration technologies on the market today. LED light bulbs, wall and loft insulation and energy efficient appliances are the energy efficiency measures identified as having the highest potential to decrease the amount of energy used. The literature review also proved that behaviour in relation to energy use is a key area to address in order to make homeowners use energy in a more efficient way.   The case study consisted of six case houses, based on the most common house types in the UK. The reference heating system used in the case study was a gas boiler connected to a central heating system of the house. 80 % of the homes in the UK are heated with a gas boiler and that is why it was chosen as a reference scenario. The case study showed that all of the microgeneration technologies use resources and energy in a more efficient way than the reference scenario. But despite the financial support of governmental subsidies none of the microgeneration technologies were financially viable options compared to a gas boiler. Energy efficiency measures, especially LED lighting, wall and loft insulation, significantly lowered the amount of energy used, they lowered the influence on greenhouse gas emissions and were financially viable options without the support of governmental subsidies.   It was identified that microgeneration technologies are impacted by behaviour and that they can enable demand-side management, especially as the number of supply-driven sources such as wind and solar PV increases.   In summation microgeneration technologies and energy efficiency measures have a large potential to help make homeowners become more sustainable from an energy perspective. Governmental support has a determining role in making them financially viable and therefore accessible to the public.