GRN

Guy Newsham's site


GUY's scientific career involves research into more sustainable buildings. he has explored both aspects of energy efficiency and indoor environment quality



Guy has a Bachelor's in Physics from the University of St. Andrews (1987), and a Ph.D. in Building Science from the University of Cambridge (1990). He joined Canada's National Research Council (NRC) in 1990, he became a Team Lead in 1999, and retired from full-time research work in 2021. At NRC he was fortunate to work with many very talented people. He has led projects on post-occupancy performance of green buildings, sensor networks, smart meter data analytics, demand response, office equipment energy use, office environments and organizational productivity, lighting quality and control, and thermal comfort. He has published more than 100 papers on his scientific work, which have received numerous international awards. He has been an invited speaker at many international scientific events, and has served as a university thesis examiner in Canada, Sweden, France, Denmark, and Ireland.

Below are some highlights of his research career. In all cases, Guy worked with a skilled team to realize valuable outcomes, this was not his work alone. Included are some links to example research publications, you can search for more of Guy's publications here.

A bibliographic analysis published in October 2020 indicated that Guy was among the world's top 2% of scientists, ranked across all disciplines.



thermal comfort





Guy's thesis work and early work at NRC addressed how various environmental and personal factors affected the thermal comfort of office workers. Rather than relying on experiments in climate chambers, he collected original data in the field using (at the time at least!) novel data collection methods, an approach that was to become a theme in his later work.


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occupant behaviour effects on energy use





Guy was a pioneer in recognizing that occupants in office buildings do not simply passively experience the indoor environments created by mechanical systems, but affect the use of these systems through their manual use of controls, and through their stochastic arrivals and departures. He demonstrated these effects by developing crude behavioural models for energy simulation software. Other researchers have taken this much further, developing better models and influencing codes and standards.


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the energy consumption of office equipment





Guy conducted some of the earliest work in establishing the energy use of desktop computers and other office equipment, and estimated the large savings potential of automatic sleep modes. These analyses contributed to the development of the first Energy Star standards, which have saved billions of dollars of energy use since their inception.


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lighting quality and controls





For many years Guy led a team with a focus on lowering the energy use of lighting in office buildings, and improving the quality of the lit environment. This was achieved through better electric lighting and daylighting, through laboratory experiments and field studies, and by contributions to various codes and standards. Among many outcomes, this research quantified preferred light levels in offices, and defined the limits to reducing light levels during periods of grid stress when demand for electricity is very high (demand response) these results were enshrined in practice via his participation in the drafting of the Illuminating Engineering Society's Recommended Practice for Office Lighting (RP-1). For these contributions, and more, Guy was made a Fellow of the IES.

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office environments





Guy has led major, multi-disciplinary (lighting, thermal comfort, air quality, acoustics) studies to understand how office design affects the indoor environment, and in turn how that environment affects occupant comfort and job satisfaction.


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green buildings





Green building rating systems (e.g. LEED) are used at the time a building (or major renovation) is designed. The question Guy set out to answer was whether green office buildings actually performed better than conventional buildings once occupied. Results showed that, on average, green buildings did indeed exhibit lower energy consumption and better indoor environments, but this was not true for every building, or for every indoor environment aspect.


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organizational productivity effects





To persuade corporate decision-makers to invest in better buildings, building science researchers have long-sought to demonstrate effects on organizational productivity metrics, in addition to energy cost savings. Guy's projects have helped develop a set of suitable metrics, and has shown that the effects of building characteristics on these metrics is similar in size to the effects of other corporate strategies designed to improve productivity. Ground-breaking work showed that bank employees in green-certified office buildings had higher ratings of organizational commitment, and manager-assessed work performance.


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residential energy use analysis





The recent availability of smart meter data, as well as billing and survey data, has opened up many opportunities for research to enhance residential energy efficiency. Guy's work has helped to quantify the effects of energy efficiency programs, develop new tools to better target such programs, as well as to expand the potential for smart thermostats to realize greater energy savings.


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guy.newsham@cantab.net