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Developing a pathway for construction professionals to meet Net Zero Energy

19 September 2019

UCL researchers from the CREDS team hosted a briefing organised by the Edge that brought together representatives from the main construction industry professional institutions who had agreed to collaborate on an urgent and concerted response to achieving the 2050 Net Zero target.

The Edge Debate event with UCL CREDS, 19 September 2019

The Committee for Climate Change (CCC) Net Zero Report is an ambitious plan to move UK from a high emission economy to a net zero position by 2050.  It requires, over the next 30 years, everything relating to the built environment to be progressively decarbonised - heat, electricity, steel, concrete and the processes of construction, refurbishment and demolition.  While the end state is fairly clear, the path that we must follow is extremely challenging and involves multiple players rapidly acting in concert to reduce and eliminate carbon emissions.

The briefing reviewed and considered:

  • The assumptions behind the report that Element Energy and UCL produced for CCC on energy use in residential stock.
  • The political, social, economic and technical challenges of delivering a zero carbon outcome.
  • The wider impacts of some of the future strategies for decarbonisation and the complementary roles of demand reduction and decarbonisation of supply.

The event was Chaired by Robin Nicholson: Senior Partner at Cullinan Studio and Convenor of The Edge.
And Speakers were:
Rokia Raslan: Senior Lecturer, Bartlett Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering, UCL
Tadj Oreszczyn:  Professor of Energy and Environment and Centre for Research in Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS) Building theme lead at the UCL Energy Institute
Foaad Tahir: Principal Consultant, Element Energy
Robert Lowe: Professor of Energy and Building Science, CREDS Decarbonising Heat Challenge lead the UCL Energy Institute