NPL is playing an active role in supporting the UK government's policies to combat climate change and secure future energy supplies.

Concerns about the Earth's changing climate and energy security have stimulated the UK government into publicly stating a number of aspirations that will be hard to achieve. The first is to ensure that all new homes are ';carbon neutral' by 2016, and the second is that the UK will reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 60% of 1990 levels by 2050.

The Thermal Measurement group at NPL are playing an important part in implementing these policies by helping to ensure that the best materials and structures are selected for use in buildings. This selection is based on independent data, and by checking thermal calculation methods used by product manufacturers and building designers.

NPL's thermal measurement facility includes: two hot box apparatus, one of the world's most accurate guarded hot plate apparatus for measuring thermal conductivity of insulation, a cryogenic guarded hot plate apparatus (to –170 °C) and a high temperature guarded hot plate apparatus (to +800 °C). The most recent addition is a facility for measuring the thermal conductivity of pipe insulation (up to +250 °C).

With the search for better ways of designing low energy buildings now looking beyond simply adding thicker layers of insulation, there is a growing need to establish measurement facilities to enable more complex thermal properties to be measured. NPL's considerable expertise in this field is addressing this need, and will hopefully help towards achieving the UK's carbon dioxide reduction targets.

For further information, contact Ray Williams

Find out more about NPL's research in Thermal Performance