Old Buildings, New Tricks: The Challenge of Decarbonising Historic Building

Join the Energy Institute Young Professionals Network and CIBSE Young Engineers Network in Bristol for an evening exploring one of the more challenging areas of the energy transition: decarbonising heritage and historic buildings.

This event is kindly sponsored by Daikin and hosted by Arup.

The UK faces a huge retrofit challenge. Buildings currently account for around 17% of UK greenhouse gas emissions and the UK has the oldest building stock in Europe. To address this challenge we must improve energy efficiency and move away from fossil-fuel heating whilst balancing conservation requirements, existing building fabric, space constraints and the practical realities of adapting building services.

This event will bring together a panel of experts to explore this challenge. Each panellist will give a short talk sharing their experience and insights, before coming together for a wider panel discussion and audience Q&A.

Through a series of short talks we will explore:

• The scale of the retrofit challenge in reaching net zero and the unique challenge of heritage buildings
• Real-world retrofit case studies and lessons learned from decarbonising existing buildings
• Heritage and conservation considerations when making changes to historic buildings
• Engineering and building-services challenges, from reducing heat demand to adapting existing heating systems

The talks and Q&A will be followed by an opportunity to network with other young professionals over food and drinks.

Format

• Welcome and introduction
• Short talks from each panellist
• Panel discussion and audience Q&A
• Food, drinks and networking

Whether you work in energy, building services, sustainability, architecture, engineering, conservation or simply have an interest in the future of our historic building stock, this should be a lively and practical discussion about how we turn ambitious decarbonisation targets into workable solutions.