With the UK Government committed to achieving Net Zero by 2050, decarbonising the built environment is essential to meet these goals. Improvements to buildings to make them more energy efficient requires high levels of air tightness to prevent heat loss: this can improve thermal comfort and reduce fuel poverty. However, high levels of air tightness can result in a significant unintended consequence: poor indoor air quality (IAQ).

Poor air quality is the largest environmental public health risk in the UK. Outdoor air quality tends to be the focus, despite on average people spending ~90% of their time indoors, where the brunt of air pollution exposure happens. While poor IAQ affects us all, it disproportionately impacts more vulnerable groups such as younger and older people. Research investigating the experiences and impacts of IAQ on older people is underdeveloped (especially compared to younger people), despite a rapidly aging population in the UK, and older people spending even more time indoors than other population sub-groups. This project will examine the experiences and impacts of Net Zero building upgrades on indoor environmental quality (IEQ) for older people (including measures of both thermal comfort and IAQ). Moreover, this project will co-produce and deploy an energy / environmental justice lens to explore how decarbonising the UK built environment can be achieved in a just way for older people.

The project will be mixed methods, including participatory systems mapping, IEQ measurements (using low-cost IEQ sensors as well as higher-grade sensors), and inductive thematic analysis of age-appropriate, less intrusive qualitative data collection. The project will investigate what it means to live with good IEQ for older people, the sociotechnical factors driving IEQ, and steps required to improve IEQ in a just way in different residential environments (e.g. care homes, and private residences).

The candidate will work with the Fair Energy Futures, and Water, Public Health and Environmental Engineering research groups at the University of Leeds, alongside external partners such as the Leeds City Council Age Friendly Leeds Partnership. This project will provide timely knowledge on age-friendly living as we move towards Net Zero buildings, to ensure that those living in care homes and ‘aging in place’ in private residences can do so in a climate and health friendly way, and to ensure that no one is left in behind in this transition.