CASE STUDY

OS working with DECC to secure affordable energy supplies

The Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) works with Ordnance Survey to make sure the UK has secure, clean, affordable energy supplies

Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) works with Ordnance Survey (OS) to make sure the UK has secure, clean and affordable energy supplies.

DECC has combined data from a number of different sources to create the National Energy Efficiency Data-Framework (NEED) which is used to effectively inform Government policy such as Green Deal, Energy Companies Obligation and Fuel Poverty.

By utilising the Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) from Ordnance Survey's AddressBase product, DECC is able to consistently cross reference data, increasing collaboration and efficiencies.

|2 MIN READ

Challenge

Collating and analysing disparate data sets is vital to inform official public policy.

However, this raises some key challenges:

  • Accessing property data from a number of different sources.
  • Using address information from multiple systems without a unique identifier.
  • No single data source when answering policy questions.
  • Rematching data each time analysis needs to be made.

Solution

National Energy Efficiency Data-Framework (NEED) is a framework for combining data from existing sources to provide insights into how energy is used and the impact on energy efficiency measures for different types of property and households.

By utilising the AddressBase Premium product, data is address matched once, each record is assigned a UPRN and is then used many times. The original data can still maintain the unique identifiers that link back to the original systems.

Result

Within DECC, outputs from NEED have already been used to inform a number of important policies designed to benefit the UK, including:

  • Estimates of savings from insulation measures to inform the development of Green Deal and Energy Companies Obligation policies.
  • Consumption by income and tenure to inform Fuel Poverty policy.
  • Consumption by property attributes to inform development of heat policy, including DECC’s Heat Map.
  • Compare My Energy (Energy UK tool).

"This is a great example of how a government department is bringing together a number of datasets to enable consistent cross referencing of data – informing policy, increasing collaboration and reducing duplication of resources."

Mary Gregory, DECC

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Products and solutions featured in this study

  • AddressBase

    AddressBase matches 29 million Royal Mail postal address to unique property reference numbers, bringing a new dimension to the matched records.

  • AddressBase Premium

    AddressBase Premium offers full lifecycle information of a property that can be used within geographical information systems & database systems.