nef was founded in 1988 by milton keynes development corporation to preserve for the future benefit of the uk public some of the energy initiatives that had been undertaken within the new city. its initial projects included extending a technical home energy label (known as the milton keynes energy cost index – mkeci) into a more generally applicable home energy rating called the national home energy rating (nher), and technical energy monitoring work on low energy homes in the milton keynes energy park. in 1994, the nher scheme was injected into a subsidiary company (sold in 2011) to run the business on behalf of the charity. in recent years, many of its projects have more of an applied research element, including collaborative projects with uk universities.