Connected system
Energy
Heat pumps and efficient buildings change when and how electricity is used.
Electricity, renewables, grids and storage
Buildings
Construction, heating, cooling and efficiency
Overview
The homes, offices and public buildings we heat, cool and build, and the materials they are made from.
Challenges01
What makes change hard
Most buildings that will stand for decades already exist, so change largely means retrofitting.
Heating and cooling still depend on burning fuel in many places.
Materials such as cement and steel carry emissions before a building is ever used.
Opportunities02
Where change is happening
Insulation and airtightness that reduce the heat a building needs.
Heat pumps and heat networks in place of fuel-burning boilers.
Lower-carbon materials, and designs that last and can be adapted.
Solutions
Approaches in this system.
- 01
Air-source heat pumps
Moving heat from outside air into a building using electricity, instead of burning fuel.
- 02
Heat networks
Shared pipes that carry heat from one low-carbon source to many buildings.
Connections
How it shapes the others.
Connected system
Industry
Steel and cement choices shape the embodied emissions of what we build.
Manufacturing, steel, cement and chemicals
Your questions, answered.
Quick answers about the platform and its content.
One of eight broad areas, such as energy, buildings or water, where climate change is felt and addressed. Solutions and projects are organised around them.
They cover the main sources of emissions and the main places adaptation happens, while staying few enough to hold in mind at once.
Only well-established mechanisms are included, described in words. No quantities are attached unless a source supports them.
Yes, constantly. That is the point of mapping them together: a change in one shifts what is possible in others.
From published research and practice. Every entry is reviewed by people who know the field and linked to the systems, solutions and projects it relates to.
