UKGBC publishes new innovation insights on reducing operational carbon

The UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) has today launched a publication showcasing solutions to reducing operational carbon gathered through a new crowdsourcing process

Net zero has never been higher on the agenda, with 94 business and organisations, 28 cities and 6 states and regions committed to WorldGBC’s Net Zero Carbon Building Commitment (NZCBC). Over the next nine years, we need to halve both the energy use of the UK’s buildings and global carbon emissions. This vast challenge requires an innovative approach to identifying and adopting solutions to ensure a swift and radical transformation across the built environment industry.

Tacking the climate and ecological crises, and their associated social impacts, is too great a challenge for any one organisation to take on alone. To make ambitions like NZCBC truly achievable requires collaboration and knowledge-sharing to increase both awareness and adoption of sustainability solutions across the built environment industry. So many of the solutions for net zero already exist but are often not common knowledge or well understood. UKGBC is uniquely positioned to convene our membership and the wider industry towards this common goal.

Therefore, over the latter half of 2020 UKGBC ran a pilot solutions crowdsourcing project focused on supporting the achievement of net zero carbon buildings. The aim of this was to inform the development of our wider work to address sustainability challenges across the built environment through increasing solution identification, dissemination and adoption.

This report outlines the process adopted for this pilot project, including the reasons behind our choice of challenges and the most relevant associated solutions. It also sets out UKGBC’s plan to scale up our solutions work through the creation of a whole new part of our website launching in the Spring.

Alastair Mant, Head of Business Transformation at UKGBC said:

“There is widespread agreement across our industry that we need to act on climate change. What will be key to tackling this challenge, is collaboration and knowledge-sharing to increase both awareness and adoption of the most innovative sustainability solutions.

“The success of this pilot project marks the beginning of an exciting opportunity for the built environment and we hope that through our unique position, we can convene those with the very best solutions to address the shared challenges across our industry and put us on track to net zero.”

UKGBC would like to thank our Steering Group of experts on Innovation and Net Zero, listed in the report, who helped shape this project and inform the development of our plans going forward.

You can download Innovation Insight: Reducing Operational Carbon here.

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