Building Energy

The Building Energy Research Group (BERG): transforming the performance of buildings for a healthy, sustainable, and zero-carbon future.

Our Aim

We believe that better buildings are essential for a healthy, sustainable, and zero-carbon future. Our high-quality, multi-disciplinary, collaborative research drives real-world impacts and helps us to develop the next generation of built environment professionals.

We operate from a world-class research, teaching and learning environment where our expertise in modelling and measurement methods is used to address four key research themes. We offer opportunities to UK and international students to study with the us at undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral level. We are active in enterprise, ranging from small pieces of consultancy to large complex projects, and collaborate widely with industry, government, and academia both in the UK and internationally.
 
Please feel free to contact any of our people in the Building Energy Research Group, or for general enquiries please email Dr David Allinson.

Research Themes & Projects

Low Energy Buildings

Building Performance Evaluation

Health, wellbeing, and indoor air quality

Smart buildings, communities, and cities

More about us

Built environment research capability at Loughborough University

High-quality consultancy services

The Building Energy Research Group has a track record of delivering high-quality consultancy services to a range of clients including Government Departments, multi-national corporations, housing associations, consultancies and SMEs. To find out more, please contact Dr David Allinson.

Research, teaching and learning environment

The Building Energy Research Group enjoys one of the UK’s largest open-plan laboratories, as well as a suite of instrumented Test Houses. We carry out research in the field to measure and monitor the performance of buildings all over the world.

  • Instrumented matched-pair 1930s semi-detached test houses with synthetic occupancy
  • Two additional instrumented test-houses with heat pump and model-predictive control
  • Thermal comfort chamber with thermal breathing manikin and laser PIV
  • Building and Industrial Services Pipework Academy
  • Twin Robotic manufacturing cell with 3D concrete printing, interchangeable tooling and large-scale metrology capability
  • Data loggers and instrumentation for monitoring building energy, thermal comfort, and indoor air quality
  • Co-heating, airtightness, U-value and infra-red thermography testing
  • Salt Bath for Natural Ventilation Flow Visualisation
  • Equipment calibration, maintenance, and storage facilities
  • Solar simulator and weather stations
  • Hygrothermal Test Facility

Expertise in modelling and measurement

The Building Energy Research Group has a broad range of expertise in modelling and measurement.

Modelling Expertise

  • Dynamic thermal simulation
  • Computational fluid dynamics
  • Community energy and urban energy modelling
  • Housing stock modelling
  • Hygrothermal simulation
  • Optimisation
  • Sensitivity and uncertainty analysis
  • Overheating risk assessment
  • Moisture, damp, and mould risk assessment
  • Daylight and photobiology
  • Open Science in Building Simulation

Measurement Expertise

  • Large-scale field trials
  • Loughborough Living Laboratory
  • Test houses with synthetic occupants
  • Thermal comfort laboratory with breathing thermal manikin and laser PIV
  • Hygrothermal Test Facility
  • Building and Industrial Services Pipework Academy
  • Solar simulator
  • Building diagnostics and post-occupancy evaluation
  • Co-heating, blower door, IR thermography
  • Energy and temperature monitoring
  • Indoor air quality monitoring
  • Occupant behaviour
  • Data analysis, programming, and statistics
  • Surveys, questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews
  • Open data and databases

Undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral study

The Building Energy Research Group support all undergraduate programmes in the School, including Architecture and Architectural Engineering.

We are very proud of our longstanding MSc programme in Low Energy Building Services Engineering and welcome a wide range of UK and international applicants for full-time or part-time study. Please download our Low Energy Building Services Engineering MSc Brochure 2021 to find out more.

We have a vibrant postgraduate research community and have been training the next generation of thought leaders for over a decade in our Centres for Doctoral Training: The London-Loughborough (LoLo) EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Energy Demand, and EPSRC and SFI Centre for Doctoral Training in Energy Resilience and the Built Environment (ERBE).

We are one of only four Royal Academy of Engineering Centres of Excellence in sustainable building design.

The Building Energy Research Group collaborates widely with institutions in the UK and around the world, including:

Our People