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By Gill Kelleher, Policy Engagement Manager


Our engagement with the Buildings Mission task group enabled the Active Building Centre to have an impact on the UK’s mission to tackle decarbonisation.


In early 2019 the Buildings Mission task group published its report which looks at ways we can innovate to make low carbon buildings cheaper to build.

As Policy Engagement Manager for the Active Building Centre, I worked alongside Head of Projects Jonathan Williams to contribute to the Buildings Mission report.

The buildings mission task group

The Buildings Mission task group brought together over 30 experts from across the building value chain. It is being supported by 12 leading industry bodies.

The UK task group examined what net zero carbon will mean for new buildings, including how they operate in-use.

The aim is to build industry consensus on a definition for net zero carbon buildings, which can then be used to inform project designs, reporting initiatives, planning requirements and building regulations.

Active building centre impact

Playing our part in the consultation was an opportunity for the work of the Active Building Centre around transforming construction to have a wider societal benefit on the homes we live in, the places we work, essential buildings in our local communities and across the wider UK infrastructure.

The Buildings Mission aims to halve building emissions by 2030.  The Active Building Centre was able to provide some evidence around that to help government on that journey.

The team at the Active Building Centre played an instrumental part in making the Buildings Mission Task Group report happen.

Active building centre contribution

We contributed through discussions at working group meetings, providing evaluation of costings around data, and demonstrated feasibility of Active Buildings and integrating technologies.

We welcomed visitors from BEIS heat team and the Smart Flexible Futures team to the Active Building demonstrators built by SPECIFIC IKC at Swansea University, to show the alternatives to gas heating that are currently available.

Following these visits, we were invited to become members of the Buildings Mission task group and asked to provide information into the report.

What the report shows is that we can already halve the energy use in buildings – so the question is: Is there an opportunity to bring the target forward earlier than 2030?

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