Built Environment and Net Zero Conference

By Prof Kenneth Gibb, Director, UK collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence, and Net Zero Conference co-organiser.

On November 11, 2021 University of Glasgow is holding a one-day online built environment and net zero/COP26 conference. This event, hosted by the Centre for Sustainable Solutions, seeks to showcase the University’s work in this area and contribute to the big themes around climate change, COP26 and the built environment.

In this short blog I’ll tell you a little bit about what we hope to achieve in the conference, who will be involved and how you can participate.

The conference is structured around an opening plenary session, a series of workshops and a closing plenary session. It will also involve a prize-winning student poster competition for both undergraduates and postgraduates.

The main themes that the conference will pursue are: reducing carbon emissions from the built environment; low carbon heat; climate resilience; and, climate finance.

The morning session will begin with a welcome and introduction from Prof Jamie Toney, Director of the Centre for Sustainable Solutions. This will be followed by a pre-recorded opening address from Patrick Harvie MSP, the Scottish Minister for net zero buildings, active travel and tenants rights.

We then move onto the opening plenary ‘decarbonising the built environment’, chaired by Prof Gioia Falcone from the School of Engineering at the University. The session will include speakers from academia, the private sector and UNECE. Each panellist will give a short 4 to 5 minute presentation, a series of provocations, which will then be followed by structured interactive debate facilitated by the chair.

There are two sets of parallel sessions, one before lunch and one after lunch which will include a total of eight workshop sessions, typically with two papers in each, covering the four themes of the conference and more. Contributors include academics from across the University of Glasgow, partners they work with and research students presenting their work.

The final plenary, entitled ‘Sustaining our building heritage through the circular economy’, is chaired by Prof Brian Evans, Glasgow School of Art and city urbanism champion. Again, in this session a panel of three speakers: Prof Francesco Pomponi, Edinburgh Napier University, Linda Shetabi, University of Glasgow, Urban Studies, and Niall Murphy, Glasgow City Heritage Trust, will each make a short provocation regarding one thing they want to see change that will sustain our existing building heritage and promote a more circular economy. This will then lead to an interactive structured debate facilitated by the chair.

Further details on the programme, the poster competition and the abstracts for parallel session papers are on the Centre for Sustainable Solutions website.

Register for a place on Eventbrite

We look forward to an interesting, wide-ranging and lively event.