Brenda Boardman

Brenda Boardman MBE (born 1943) is a research fellow at University of Oxford and a campaigner against fuel poverty. She provided the evidence and theory base for measuring the energy inefficiency of houses, coined the term 'affordable warmth' She was subsequently employed at the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex. She started her doctoral research in 1983, Since then, UK government policy has developed and made progress with the issues around fuel poverty.

Boardman was especially interested in fuel poverty and how energy is used in low-income homes. for use in England, although it continued to be used by governments in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland for at least another decade.

Boardman also discussed a link between global warming and fuel poverty in her book as a further reason for needing to have energy-efficient homes. Cold houses use energy inefficiently and thus cause unnecessary carbon dioxide emissions.

Boardman has worked at the University of Oxford since 1991. She was initially employed in a post on energy efficiency funded by Powergen in the university's new Environmental Change Unit and also appointed as a senior research fellow at St Hilda's College.

In parallel with her academic career, Boardman has led campaigns related to fuel poverty. From 1987 to 1991 she chaired the National Right to Fuel Campaign, having been a member since 1984.

Boardman is a visiting professor at the University of Exeter.

Publications Books, reports, scientific articles and pamphlets that Boardman has authored or co-authored include:

Brenda Boardman (2010) Fixing Fuel Poverty: Challenges and solutions. Routledge, 272 pp, Brenda Boardman (1991) Fuel Poverty: From Cold Homes to Affordable Warmth. Belhaven Press, 267 pp Robert C. Armstrong, Catherine Wolfram, Krijn P. de Jong, Robert Gross, Nathan S. Lewis, Brenda Boardman, Arthur J. Ragauskas, Karen Ehrhardt-Martinez, George Crabtree & M. V. Ramana (2016). The frontiers of energy. Nature Energy, 1:15020 G. Milne & B. Boardman (2000). Making cold homes warmer: the effect of energy efficiency improvements in low-income homes. Energy Policy, 28:411–424

Awards In 1998, she was awarded an MBE for her work on energy efficiency.

Personal life Boardman was not able to go to university immediately after she left school because of a misunderstanding about the date of one A-level examination, resulting in her not taking it. Instead, she took a secretarial course. This enabled her to work while she travelled around the world in the 1960s. She married John Boardman and they had two children. They lived in Lewes from the mid-1970s but the family moved to Oxford in 1991 once she was employed at University of Oxford.