Summer 2025 Internship Case Study
Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of Net Zero Retrofit Pathways
Alexander Austin (BSc Quantity Surveying student) explored how to decarbonise Scotland’s buildings, focussing upon housing stock. The project assessed different retrofit strategies across common building types, comparing three different intervention levels using life cycle assessments to better understand their relative impacts.
Findings showed that operational energy dominates carbon emissions in existing buildings, meaning that even small-scale upgrades can deliver significant impact. Alex’s research identified a hybrid approach to building retrofit as often being the most effective, balancing meaningful energy savings with lower embodied carbon in materials used.
The findings build upon existing assessments on our Edinburgh campus, which highlight the importance of whole-life building assessment when considering sustainable building retrofit and design.
Alex’s research findings and conclusions tie in well with the retrofit work happening on campus, enabling recommendations to be made with regards data requirements, tools and material choices in retrofit decisions.
Smart Environmental Monitoring for Campus Energy Efficiency
Jemma Swan (BSc Computer Science student) proposed and developed a mobile network of low-power sensors to support environmental data monitoring across the Edinburgh Campus.
The project used LoRa (Long Range Wide Area) sensors to collect and collate data on temperature, CO2 levels, vibration/movement and lighting levels, enabling real-time environmental data to be transmitted back for analysis via the use of a campus digital twin. This is useful for many reasons, one being the potential for anomalies to be flagged and assessed, highlighting areas where energy efficiency upgrades possess the greatest potential impact.
By providing flexible, granular monitoring of buildings and spaces across campus, this project has contributed to improving our understanding of energy performance and indoor environmental conditions in spaces that are subject to changing uses and conditions on a daily basis. This work builds upon previous sustainability internships that explored retrofit options and energy efficiency improvements based on the building fabric alone, further contributing to valuable data to inform future decision-making.
Jemma’s research has enhanced our understanding of how good or bad a particular location might be in delivering anticipated energy efficiency improvements. Campus buildings and the materials they are constructed from are part of the picture, but how they are used and how they function as teaching and research spaces must also be considered when deciding on where energy efficiency upgrades can find the greatest impact.