Zero Carbon Ready? How the housing sector must respond to COP26
Delivering net zero through re-use, retrofit, and reconfigured neighbourhoods
View the presentations from this event in our Resources section
Following on from the 2019 UNECE Glasgow Conference on City Living and events in 2020, The Academy of Urbanism continues its housing series with a conference exploring reuse as a means to deliver net zero homes and the wider role that reconfigured neighbourhoods and community-owned social housing can play towards 2050 carbon goals.
With the annual Conference of the Parties rapidly approaching, what’s different this year, according to the hosts, is that this is the world’s best last chance to get runaway climate change under control. International scientific consensus says that to prevent the worst of climate damages, global net human-made CO2 needs to fall by a daunting 45 per cent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching net zero around 2050.
But as countries ramp up their commitments – indeed the UK and Ireland are now both on a legally-binding path to becoming net zero by 2050 – the question is how we turn abstract agreements into practice, and particularly in the energy-thirsty residential housing market.
While new housing is being reformed through policies such as the Future Homes Standard in the UK and Nearly Zero Energy Buildings across the EU, the vast majority of buildings that will exist in 2050 have already been built – estimated at 80 per cent in UK. Therefore, if net zero ambitions and climate protection are to be realised, existing homes and places have a significant role to play.
Join us for this one-day conference to find out how Net Zero is being framed by policymakers and analysts, how retrofit and reuse are being used across Europe and Ireland to tackle the carbon challenge, and what wider challenges lay ahead to achieving these planet-critical goals.
We will explore how to reimagine neighbourhood components for a low carbon future and, using the COP26 host city as a key case study, Glasgow’s commitment to community-owned social housing as a model to meet climate goals whilst providing other elements for healthy, equitable living.
Finally, we will use this conference as an opportunity to revisit two key documents: The AoU’s Urbanists Declare and the Glasgow Declaration on City Living, the latter which was conceived at the 2019 conference.
Programme
| 09:15 | Zoom Room Opens |
| 09:20 | Welcome from Andrew Burrell, Chair of The Academy of Urbanism |
| 09:25 | Session 1: The Zero Carbon challenge for towns and cities Chaired by Professor Sadie Morgan OBE, Director, dRMM. Chair, Quality of Life Foundation A Renovation Wave for Europe – Greening our buildings, creating jobs, improving lives Ciaran Cuffe MEP, Member of the European Parliament for Green Party and Rapporteur for A Renovation Wave for Europe Retofirst – The Architects’ Journal Campaign Will Hurst, Managing Editor, AJ Housing 2030 - A toolkit for affordable and carbon-friendly housing Prof. Dr. Holger Wallbaum, Professor in Sustainable Building, Chalmers University of Technology Q&A |
| 11:00 | Break |
| 11:25 | Session 2: In practice – retrofit and re-use of buildings
Chaired by Andrew Burrell, Chair, The Academy of Urbanism People-powered retrofit Helen Grimshaw, Senior Sustainability Consultant, URBED Rejuvenating social housing in Berlin and Frankfurt Thomas Kraubitz, Director and Head of Sustainability in Europe, Buro Happold Cities Europe Existing buildings – who decides what is kept and what is demolished Nick Walker, Collective Architecture Learning lessons from an evaluation of a traditional tenement retrofit Professor Ken Gibb, Director and Principal Investigator, UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (CaCHE) Q&A |
| 12:50 | Lunch |
| 13:50 | Session 3: Sustainable Neighbourhoods
Implementation and implications Chaired by Chris Brown, Executive Chair, Igloo Developing with a sustainable agenda John Coleman, Chief Executive, Land Development Agency Ireland Retrofitting for quality of life Dr. Elanor Warwick, Head of Strategic Policy and Research, Clarion Retrofitting for active neighbourhoods Wesley Wroe, Principal Engineer, Stantec Josh Grantham, Stantec Delivering reuse in neighbourhoods – Kelham Island, Sheffield Jonathan Wilson, Development Director, Citu Net Zero Carbon Neighbourhoods Jacqueline Homan, Head of Environment, West Midlands Combined Authority Q&A |
| 15:40 | Break |
| 16:00 | Session 4: Urbanists towards COP26
David Rudlin, Director, The Academy of Urbanism Households Declare Anna Lisa McSweeney, Member of ACAN, Member of Steering Group of Architects Declare, and Arkitekt at White Arkitekter Presentation and discussion on the role of urbanists in the climate crisis. |
| 16:30 | Close |
Image of housing by Natesh Ramasamy via Flickr