Energy systems studio
We redesign how heat flows through estates, towns and time so people live well, communities thrive and our planet heals.
If you are here, you are probably carrying real responsibility. Keeping buildings dependable. Spending public money wisely. Cutting emissions without breaking services. Making decisions that still feel sound in twenty years, not just year one.
Generation 7 exists for that space. We help you slow the overwhelm, see the whole picture and shape a practical direction of travel that works in the real world. The centre of gravity is simple: make heat work for life.
Why it matters now
Heat is one of the biggest levers we have and it has been treated like a background problem.
The UK is in the middle of the biggest transformation of its energy systems since the Industrial Revolution. Many estates are running on equipment older than the people who operate it. Budgets are being outpaced by bills. Targets are approaching faster than teams can adapt. Policy is shifting fast and delivery capacity is stretched.
This is not just engineering. It is wellbeing. It is resilience. It is how places hold together in winter. Heat shapes comfort, cost and carbon at the same time, which means it also shapes trust, health and how communities feel about the future.
UK carbon emissions linked to heat
Public sector estates needing major upgrades
Typical losses before useful heat reaches people
Broken economics
Heat is a major share of spend across public estates, yet much of what is generated never becomes comfort. That waste quietly becomes missed services, delayed upgrades and exhausted teams.
Ageing infrastructure
Many systems were built for a different century. Oversized boilers, unbalanced networks, patch repairs and low visibility. The harder the world gets, the more that legacy shows up.
Skills and capacity gap
Estate teams are stretched. Advice is fragmented. Projects get split across silos. The result is decisions made in pieces, then lived as one system.
Communities feel it first
When heat fails, life stops. Care becomes harder. Learning becomes harder. Recovery becomes harder. This work is about keeping places safe, dependable and dignified.
Our roadmap
A progressive way to redesign your energy future.
This roadmap exists to help you see the estate you already have, spot the value already leaking out of it and build a plan that stands up to winters, budgets, staffing shifts and policy swings.
See the whole estate
We bring data, load patterns, real behaviours and lived experience into one view, so decisions stop being made in fragments.
Reimagine the flows
Where heat comes from, where it goes, where it is wasted and how losses can become assets across the wider system.
Design for people, place and planet
Low temperature networks, flexible zones, integrated renewables and systems shaped around how buildings are actually used.
Build what future generations will thank you for
Systems that are upgradeable, repairable and coherent over decades, so tomorrow inherits something stronger.
Four horizons
A way to move from coping to planning and from isolated upgrades to civic benefit.
Most estates need progress that works today and a direction that grows over time. These horizons connect the immediate realities of plant and comfort with the longer story of place, community value and regeneration.
Fix today’s failures
Reduce waste. Stabilise comfort. Make heat visible. Improve briefs and building level logic so the basics stop stealing attention.
Connect the estate
Balance loads. Recover waste heat. Link buildings. Improve sensing and control, so the estate starts behaving like a system.
Build the community layer
Neighbourhood scale loops. Sharing energy. Designing governance. Strengthening resilience, so heat becomes a civic asset.
Regenerative systems
Closed loops. Circular flows. Heating and cooling as part of life. Long term prosperity that supports health and ecology together.
Where this came from
A lesson from a mountain village.
Generation 7 grew out of a small hydropower project in a highland village in the Philippines. The engineering challenge was real, but the lesson that stayed was human.
What was striking was not the turbine. It was the way the system belonged to the people. Resources were shared. Waste was rare. Responsibility was held together. The landscape was treated as something to live with, not something to drain.
The insight that lodged itself was simple and permanent. Systems thrive when people do. Energy design is relationship design. Hospitals and campuses can feel far from a mountain community, yet the principle holds. Design in isolation and hidden costs appear later. Design as a whole and value starts to compound.
What we do
Think tank, systems studio and infrastructure engineers.
We reframe heating and cooling from a compliance problem into a systems opportunity. From strategy and briefs to detailed design support and optimisation, we help you see how heat moves through buildings, budgets, behaviours and policy, then design it better.
Energy systems studio
Strategy that lives in the real world. We join policy, plant rooms and people on the ground so teams move from “we should” to a plan that holds.
Think and do tank
Better briefs, governance and funding cases, so projects are set up to succeed. Less box ticking. More shared clarity about what good looks like.
Infrastructure engineers
Design that holds under pressure. Robust hydraulics, pragmatic phasing and drawings contractors can actually build from, with performance that lasts.
What you get
Clear options. Evidence that stands up to scrutiny. A partner who can explain complexity to boards, clinicians, residents, councillors and communities.
If your next project involves briefing, funding or redesigning heat, there is a gentler way to start. The Better Brief Guide is a practical companion for shaping decisions that work for people, place and planet, without pretending the world is simpler than it is.