Energy World was a demonstration project of 51

low-energy house A low-energy house is characterized by an energy-efficient design and technical features which enable it to provide high living standards and comfort with low energy consumption and carbon emissions. Traditional heating and active cooling systems ...

s constructed in the

Shenley Lodge Shenley Brook End is a village, district and wider civil parish in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England, located about north-west of Bletchley, and south-west of Central Milton Keynes. Together with its neighbouring districts of Shenley Ch ...

area of

Milton Keynes Milton Keynes ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in Buckinghamshire, England, about north-west of London. At the 2021 Census, the population of Milton Keynes urban area, its urban area was 264,349. The River Great Ouse forms t ...

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. The project was promoted by the

Milton Keynes Development Corporation Milton Keynes Development Corporation (MKDC) was a development corporation operating from 1967 to 1992 to oversee the planning and early development of Milton Keynes, then a planned new town midway between London and Birmingham. At designation ...

and culminated in a public exhibition in August and October 1986 that attracted international interest. It was a significant landmark in the design and construction of low-energy housing, and in the development of energy efficiency evaluation tools. It has had a long-term impact on Government policy and within the national house-building industry, insofar as the progressive 'tightening up' of the energy section of the Building Regulations has largely been founded on this pioneering work. The houses were designed to be at least 30% more efficient than the Building Regulations then in force. The

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...

and technologies used was very varied, and included designs from

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

(the first R-2000 house in the UK),

Denmark Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

, and

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

. Although it was later removed, the exhibition also featured a

wind turbine A wind turbine is a device that wind power, converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy. , hundreds of thousands of list of most powerful wind turbines, large turbines, in installations known as wind farms, were generating over ...

, then an uncommon sight. The

United Kingdom House of Commons The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the upper house, the House of Lords, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. The House of Commons is an elected body consisting of 650 memb ...

commissioned an environmental study of housing sustainability in the 20042005 session. One expert witness testified that Milton Keynes housing was continuing to sell for 3% above the price of other housing in the area, while responding to a committee member's question whether environmentally-friendly houses were marketable. Energy World was one of several low-energy projects built in the Milton Keynes area. These included trials on a number of individual houses and the construction of 177 houses in the 1970s Pennyland project. Following the success of Energy World, 1,200 dwellings were built to the same (or better) energy standard in the rest of

(known as 'the Energy Park

and the same standard was subsequently applied Citywide. The concept of the Energy Park was extended into non-residential buildings built across

Watling Street Watling Street is a historic route in England, running from Dover and London in the southeast, via St Albans to Wroxeter. The road crosses the River Thames at London and was used in Classical Antiquity, Late Antiquity, and throughout the M ...

in Knowlhill where a number of low energy office buildings have been constructed including the two phases of the headquarters buildings of the

National Energy Foundation The National Energy Foundation (NEF) is an independent British charity, established to improve the use of energy in buildings. Aims The charity aims to ''improve the use of energy in buildings''. This statement simplified the earlier stated ...

Home energy efficiency rating schemes

Another area where Energy World continues to have an impact derives from the Milton Keynes Energy Cost Index (MKECI

which was used to calculate the energy efficiency of the Energy World houses. Based on the results and feedback from Energy World, this was to evolve into the UK's first national energy efficiency rating scheme for buildings, with the launch in 1990 of the

National Home Energy Rating The National Home Energy Rating Scheme (NHER) is both a UK accreditation scheme for energy assessors and a rating scale for the energy efficiency of housing. The NHER was owned and operated by National Energy Services (NES). Until 2011, NES wa ...

scheme (NHER

This, in turn, gave rise to the introduction in 1995 of the

Standard Assessment Procedure The Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) is the UK government's recommended method system for measuring the energy rating of residential dwellings. The methodology is owned by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, and produced u ...

(SAP) rating system used in the national Building Regulations and in home Energy Performance Certificates (originally introduced in 2007 as part of the

Home Information Pack Under Part 5 of the Housing Act 2004 a Home Information Pack (HIP, on lowercase letters: hip), sometimes called a Seller's Pack, was to be provided before a property in England and Wales could be put on the open market for sale with vacant posses ...

References

External links

The Energy World exhibitionThe development of environmental building standards in Milton KeynesMilton Keynes Energy Park Revisited: changes in internal temperatures
{{Coord, 52, 01, 06, N, 0, 46, 18, W, dim:100_region:GB, display=title Low-energy building in the United Kingdom History of Milton Keynes Houses completed in 1986

Home energy efficiency rating schemes

See also

References

External links