A series of one-day conferences around the country will showcase the opportunities presented by the process of retrofit. The Retrofit Roadshows will take place in Liverpool and Birmingham in July, Newcastle and Cardiff in September and London in November.
Retrofit has become a big issue with the launch of The Green Deal and the roll out of the Energy Company Obligation (ECO). Applying low-carbon technology to existing buildings will revolutionise the opportunities for linking energy saving with economies.
According of the newsletter of Retrofit 2050 – a project being pioneered by a number of university departments and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council: “Systemic improvement to the built environment can be found across urban, rural and suburban communities in both the Global North and South.”
The practicality of delivering those activities is the subject matter of the Retrofit Roadshows with its line-up of experts leading the discussion.
The series kicks off in Liverpool on 4 July, where a collaboration between social landlords and local authorities has resulted in Project Viridis – a programme to retrofit 100,000 homes that is estimated to be worth £50bn to the local economy. A representative from Project Viridis will be among the speakers at the conference, as will a speaker from the University of Salford, one of the partners in Retrofit 2050.
It is followed by Retrofit Birmingham and West Midlands on 9 July. The West Midlands is regarded as being “…perhaps more advanced in its retrofit journey than any other area of the UK”. The Birmingham Energy Savers Programme is the largest in the country.
The conferences are being delivered in partnership with Liverpool City Region, Birmingham Energy Savers, Warm Up North, the Welsh Government and the Institute for Sustainability. They are being run in conjunction with Retro Expo, the national exhibition taking place at the NEC in Birmingham from on 5-6 November.
The whole programme follows a national conference in June organised by Sustainable Homes, Shift Index and the Homes and Communities Agency. Retrofitting 2013 takes place in Stoke-on-Trent on 5 June.
The foreword to The Retrofit Challenge: Delivering Low Carbon Buildings, a 2011 document by the Centre for Low Carbon Futures says: “If we are to hit our national carbon reduction target of 80% by 2050, almost every building in the country will need a low energy makeover.”