URBED at EcoBuild

Charlie Baker, URBED (Manchester), Marianne Heaslip, URBED (Manchester), and Nicholas Falk, URBED (London) are all involved in seminars at EcoBuild Conference 2013. Seminar Details are as follows:

Wednesday 6th March 2013, 10.30 - 12.00

Holistic low carbon neighbourhood refurbishment

While the arguments for retrofitting individual buildings are well rehearsed there are many more opportunities for carbon savings at the neighbourhood level. Measures impractical at an individual building scale can be deployed over neighbourhoods. It enables all the resources coming into and going out of communities to be looked at as one so that waste arisings from one part can be reused for another. It enables everyone, other than the pioneers and early adopters, to be engaged so that energy savings are not lost on increases in use. It also maximises the economic and regeneration potential of retrofit.

chair: Charlie Baker, URBED, Manchester

The carbon co-op, a community green deal and more
Charlie Baker, Urbed, Manchester

Working at scale - opportunities for an area based approach
Richard Baines, Director of Sustainable Development, Black Country Housing Group

District energy and local generation
Michael King, Director, District Energy Development Ltd

Crouch Hill Community Park - Community Scale Refurbishment
Rafael Marks, Associate, Penoyre & Prasad Architects

The Haringey Carbon Commitment: creating borough wide sustainable neighbourhood economies through retrofit, CHP and prosperity
Elizabeth Cox, Head of Connected Economies, new economics foundation

This seminar is part of the Refurbishing Britain stream.

It is estimated that at least 70% of the UK’s housing stock likely to exist in 2050 has already been built. Three-quarters of these existing dwellings were built before 1975 with 25% built before 1919. Furthermore 65% of houses are owner-occupied. Buildings emit 44% of the UK’s entire greenhouse gases with 27% coming from homes and 17% from other buildings. The Climate Change Act required that an 80% reduction in greenhouse gases on 1990 levels is achieved by 2050 with 30% achieved by 2020. The EU 2050 Building Sector targets require an 88-91% reduction on 1990 levels by 2050. The only way these targets can be met is by refurbishing and retrofitting buildings on an individual, neighbourhood and city wide scale.

Wednesday 6th March 2013, 16.30 - 18.00

Sustainable urban form – compact city or garden suburb?

Achieving urban sustainability appears to be an imperative with a short timescale for delivery. Given that sustainability needs to be a balance of social, environmental and economic factors, what are the current drivers for creating sustainable urban environments in our existing cities and what should be the drivers for creating sustainable urban environments? This seminar will explore the issues through a comparison of city forms.

chair: Professor Tim Dixon, Chair, Sustainable Futures in the Built Environment, University of Reading

Developing city visions
Professor Tim Dixon, Chair, Sustainable Futures in the Built Environment, University of Reading

Urban metabolism
Dr Adriana Allen, Senior Lecturer, Development Planning Unit, UCL

Compact cities: understanding the role of density
Dr Chris Boyko, Senior Research Fellow, University of Lancaster

Garden suburbs? Appropriate solutions with case studies from the Sustainable Urban Neighbourhood Network
Dr Nicholas Falk, Founder & Director, URBED

Thursday 7th March 2013, 14.15 - 15.45

Existing dwellings – what should the retrofit standard be?

Criticism of the Retrofit for the Future programme has tended to focus on costs and the extent to which targets can be achieved. The National Housing Federation’s guide, Managing the Assets suggests that reducing carbon emission by 60% costs half that of the 80% target, and is more appropriate when decarbonisation of the electricity grid and other factors such as replacement are taken into account. This seminar will look at what can be achieved at an affordable cost.

chair: Mark Elton, Associate Director, ECD Architects

Kathryn Derby, Senior Energy Consultant, Rickaby Thompson Associates

Fran Bradshaw, Anne Thorne Architects

Marianne Heaslip, URBED

EcoBuild is free to attend and is held at the ExCel Arena in London, Tuesday 5th - Thursday 7th March 2013. See the EcoBuild website for more information