Jenny is a Research Associate in Energy and Buildings at UCL Energy Institute, and is part of the RCUK Centre for Energy Epidemiology. Her research interests include the design and execution of socio-technical research into domestic energy use, in-use building performance, building physics and methods of building energy modelling.

Jenny worked for two years as a Consultant at Element Energy, a low carbon energy consultancy carrying out rigorous mathematical analysis to help provide a sound evidence base for clients to make decisions on low carbon strategy. Jenny was hired as a built environment specialist and carried out modelling and analysis for clients including DECC, the CCC, energy companies and charities. Example projects included: creation of a dynamic model of a micro-CHP system interacting with a house, zonal simulation of different heating systems in a historic palace to protect the building without a high energy penalty and technoeconomic modelling of the integration of heat pumps in district heating networks.

Jenny’s training in the field of energy demand came from her PhD at the LoLo Centre for energy demand reduction in the built environment, where she studied how energy efficient building retrofit might change occupants’ heating behaviour. Her work focussed on integrating technical evidence from sensors and social data from occupants to discern how increase in internal temperature comes about when homes are retrofitted. She was able to challenge the conventional physics-based and economic approaches to retrofit, proposing a socio-technical approach instead.

Jenny holds an MSc in Environmental Design and Engineering at UCL and a Physics degree at the University of Oxford. Between these courses she spent a year volunteering with a Christian Organisation.

Policy reports produced for government:

Heat pumps in district heating (DECC)

Localised approaches to district heating (Committee on Climate Change)

Bottom-up analysis of fuel poverty in Ireland (Irish government)

Thesis:

Understanding the interactions between occupants, heating systems and building fabric in the context of energy efficient building fabric retrofit in social housing [PDF 7 MB]

UCL congratulates its first LoLo PhD success – news item