About

From extensive experience, both in teaching and in industry, we have concluded that many buildings start with great carbon and energy ambitions but drift towards poorly-performing designs that are hard to bring back onto a low-carbon course.

In our view this is because modelling often happens late in the design process, and is done by specialists. This leaves early-stage designers without enough information to produce the most optimal designs. By the time these designs are advanced to the modelling stage, it can be too late to make significant changes.

Zebra was developed by the University of Bath to solve this problem. It is a suite of carbon and energy modelling tools for early design decisions.

Zebra is free and built in excel. It requires no specialist knowledge or software. The modelling is approximate, but it is quick and sufficient for early decision-making. It aids understanding of the consequences of design decisions and so improves the designs that are advanced to the modelling stage.