Trial / Demo
Did you miss our recent net-zero carbon buildings masterclass? The session is now available to watch on demand.
Last week, IES joined forces with edie for a live masterclass as part of World Green Building Week – the world’s largest campaign to accelerate sustainable built environments across the globe.
From energy auditing and data collection, through to the implementation of energy efficiency programmes, retrofit, onsite renewables and behaviour change initiatives, the session made clear that there are a multitude of paths businesses can take to improve building performance and ultimately get to net-zero.
Hosted by edie’s editor, Matt Mace, the masterclass aimed to cut through complexities and provide need-to-know information for businesses, energy and sustainability managers and other key stakeholders when it comes to implementing effective building decarbonisation strategies. Insights were shared through expert presentations from IES’s Adam Goves and Etienne Humphries, Head of Building Performance at Bruntwood, before attendees were invited to pose their questions to the speakers in a live Q&A.
Etienne, who oversees energy and carbon performance across Bruntwood’s extensive property portfolio, was able to bring some unique insight to the session, from an owner, operator and developer perspective. He kicked off the session by highlighting how Bruntwood are addressing some of the key challenges involved in achieving net-zero across their portfolio: from optimising day-to-day operational performance, to navigating the management of EPC ratings and associated MEES regulations against the actual operation of their buildings, and ultimately how they are rising to the challenge of delivering net-zero for their clients and properties.
Both speakers highlighted that achieving net zero in existing buildings is significantly more challenging to plan for than in newly designed buildings. There are of course many unknowns when it comes to older buildings, which means that gaining a comprehensive understanding of current and potential future performance, both at an asset and operational level, can be incredibly difficult.
To provide attendees with practical guidance on how best to address some of these challenges, Etienne shared some insight from his involvement in developing the UKGBC’s recent commercial retrofit guidance – a key document for those operating in the commercial office sector. Building the Case for Net Zero: Retrofitting Office Buildings provides high-level guidance to investors, owners, occupiers, and the consultants who work with them, on the most appropriate retrofit measures, retrofit phases, costs, and likely impacts of various retrofit and optimisation measures on both energy performance and whole life carbon emissions.
Adam was able to build on these insights from an IES perspective, placing emphasis on the need for a whole-life building performance modelling approach to provide confidence in net-zero carbon strategies. Adam shared our best practice approach to decarbonising existing buildings, taking attendees through the key stages of: Assess, Plan, Implement and Monitor & Optimise, sharing real case study examples from our work with clients including Morrisons, Dublin City Council, Savills and the University of Liverpool.
If you missed the live session, or to recap on the discussion points, you can now watch the recording on demand.
Are you a practitioner working on existing building decarbonisation projects, or a building owner/operator looking to identify the best strategies to get your existing building(s) to net-zero? Explore how energy modelling and our dynamic tools can provide the insights you need to improve existing building performance and deliver net zero retrofits with confidence.
