Windows leak heat like a sieve, and this project aims to plug that leak with smarter glass. Buildings account for over 40% of UK energy use, largely to keep people comfortable. Glazed façades must juggle conflicting jobs—letting in daylight while blocking unwanted heat. Current designs often fail at one or both. This research tackles that trade-off head-on by embedding low-cost optical components into standard double glazing. The goal is to make windows outperform walls in net energy balance over a year. If successful, the new façade system could cut artificial lighting energy by over 20%, reduce heating demand by more than 30% in winter, and lower cooling loads by 20% in summer. For a typical commercial building, that translates directly into lower energy bills and fewer carbon emissions. The team also plans to integrate active solar technologies into the façade, potentially pushing commercial buildings toward a net-negative annual energy load—meaning they generate more energy than they consume. This is applied engineering, not fundamental science. The impact is immediate and measurable: better windows that quietly shrink the energy footprint of the buildings people work in every day.
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Buildings currently account for over 40% of the total UK energy consumption and a similar percentage of the UK CO2 emissions. The energy used in buildings is largely required for creating a thermally and visually comfortable environment for building occupants. Glazed façades play an important role in determining a building's energy performance and are called upon to perform a range of, sometimes conflicting, functions. They are required to i) regulate heat transfer to and from the external environment by solar and long wave radiation, conduction and convection ii) allow transmittance natural daylight to provide interior illumination, reducing the need for supplementary electric lighting and to provide an aesthetic function, both in terms of their influence on building appearance and providing occupants a visual link to the external environment. Improving fenestration energy performance can make a significant contribution to reducing building energy loads. It is reported that optimal glazing design could reduce residential building energy consumption by 10-50% in most climates, while for commercial, institutional and industrial buildings, a properly specified fenestration system could reduce lighting and air-conditioning costs by 10-40%. We are going to carry out a holistic approach to develop advanced façades technologies to achieve building energy demand reduction goals. This compliments Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS) objectives of energy demand within the 'building' & 'heat decarbonisation' theme of the centre. Low cost optical components will be designed and integrated into conventional double glazing, which will significantly increase the thermal resistance of the window, provide control of the solar heat gain, and enable windows to perform better than walls on a yearly basis in terms of their net energy balance. Building energy loads will be reduced significantly while providing comfortable daylight. The target is that when integrated in a typical commercial building the novel glazing façade system will provide comfortable annual daylight levels achieving over a 20% reduction in annual artificial lighting energy consumption, reduce space heating demand by over 30% in the heating season and cooling load by 20% in Summer. The integration in a façade system of active solar energy technologies with better performing windows may potentially lead commercial buildings to be a negative energy load on an annual basis.
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