Symposium: Innovations in UK Building Retrofits

Hannah Baker: The Decarbonisation Network exists to provide a platform for University researchers and external specialists to have frank and open discussions. This is because idea exchange is vital for high quality research and we also need collaboration if we are going to tackle the issue of net zero.

Manar Alsaif: The symposium was especially focused on Innovations in Retrofits to decarbonise the built environment and this is a theme that has emerged after a year of online meetings and it was clearly one we could have much great impact on by working together. So, we had half the attendees from Industry and half from the University and we have been able to have some in-depth brainstorming sessions and road mapping workshops to find where are the next steps and what can we do to demonstrate decarbonisation in the built environment.

Helene Gosden: For me retrofit at scale is a complex systems challenge and I think that we all recognise that complex challenges require deep collaboration to overcome them and I guess what the planet needs from us is deep collaboration that transcends normal business models and I feel that the Decarbonisation Network and the Special Interest Groups that are live and active in Cambridge are a brilliant catalyst for this kind of collaboration. It has been fantastic to bring so many people from across industry and academia together to bring their own insights and perspectives that bring value to this conversation.

Adam Boies: We are taking carbon out of methane, making a useful material out of it and then also making the hydrogen for use as energy so a big dream of ours would be to make carbon dioxide more valuable as a stored carbon, as a building material as it is as CO2.

Hannah Baker: For the second half of the day we focused on emerging technologies in retrofit and we had presentations about a range of technologies including aerogels, solar panels and different types of materials. We then had focus group discussions to see how these technologies could be accelerated from academic and industry collaboration.

KT Tan: The decarbonisation process in my view is a holistic approach. So you need different technologies to solve the same problem. I am pleased to see there are a diversification of technologies in an event like today and everyone is aiming for the same target.

Manar Alsaif: Everyone here is working towards net-zero in one way or another and it is clear that we can achieve so much more impact by working together.