Nearly 75% of District, County, Unitary & Metropolitan Councils plus eight Combined Authorities/City Regions have declared a Climate Emergency to date. So all those working within and for the public sector are seriously considering how their organisation can reduce its impact on the environment whilst working within restrictive financial times.
Our chosen theme for SPACES over the coming year will be Net Zero Carbon and the Climate Emergency, and looks to support our members by organising webinars and technical meetings to cover various aspects and challenges on the topic to assist in project delivery.
As a collaborative organisation, encapsulating all the professions of the Built Environment, we are focussing on how we can work together to meet the UK target to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. The emphasis will be on real experiences, lessons learned and the need to work collaboratively to deliver workable solutions to reduce our carbon emissions.
On the 28th April, we launched by holding a Roundtable Discussion with four leading experts covering the challenges we all face and how they themselves are tackling them in their own organisations. The discussion was focussed on:
- How do we decide what to “green” and what to “offset” and is there an acceptable ratio?
- What is our ethical responsibility to green assets we no longer need?
Hosted by Alex Gee, we were very pleased to welcome
- Marina Robertson, Senior Director, NPS Group
- Patrick Begg, Outdoors and Natural Resources Director, National Trust
- Dr Shaun Fitzgerald, Director, Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge University
- Sheryl French, Programme Director for Climate Change and Energy Investment, Cambridgeshire County Council
You can watch the video on YouTube.
The host, Alex Gee spoke to them beforehand about their career, the important lessons they have learnt, what they think we should do to actively achieve net zero carbon, and why we need to be involved.. You can find links to the podcasts here.
Between Monday 7th June and Friday 18th June, we held a Virtual Conference with experts from client side, design, construction, academia & the public sector discussing Zero Carbon, the Climate Emergency and why we must act now!
There was the variety of our previous annual Study Days on a wide range of subjects including:
- The Latest Technologies
- Regulations and Standards
- Insights Into Sectors – Schools, Houses, Offices
- Refurbishment
- Design Tools
For information on the Virtual Conference and to view the delegate pack see here.
Thank you to our sponsors for this year, Atkins, Faithful+Gould, IES NPS and Willmott Dixon.