Tackling the climate emergency
We’re pleased to receive an award of £250,000 for a new sustainable housing project in Glasgow that has the potential to make a big contribution to addressing the climate emergency in Scotland.
The project, funded by the Scottish Funding Council’s Climate Emergency Collaboration Challenge, will retrofit a block of eight tenement flats in Govanhill. This will enable real-life testing of changes to specifications for the refurbishment of properties to help understand how to reduce carbon emissions from existing housing stock.
Project lead Professor of Housing Economics Ken Gibb believes there is the potential for energy savings of between 75% and 90%. “Older housing is a key source of the carbon challenge, especially our pre-1919 tenements. This demonstration project allows us to both learn about this particular form of retrofit and to assess how to scale up and provide replicable solutions across the range of Glasgow tenements.”
The project is the first outcome of the Memorandum of Understanding agreed between Glasgow City Council and the academic institutions in the city which commits universities and colleges to working with the Council to advance shared priorities and ensure academic expertise is able to inform public policy in Glasgow.
Councillor Susan Aitken is Leader of Glasgow City Council: “This project in Govanhill gives us an opportunity to create a template which has the potential to make major inroads towards our net zero target, create warmer homes, reduce fuel bills and retain our characteristic housing stock.”
“We are facing a global climate emergency and one of the major challenges is not only how we build in the future, but reducing carbon emissions from existing housing stock. Innovation plays a key part in this and will help us reach our ambitious, world-leading target to reach net-zero by 2045.” Ivan McKee MSP Minister for Trade, Investment & Innovation."
This article was first published March 2020.
“I’m delighted to see this example of the University and partners across Glasgow working together for the benefit of the city. As we face the climate emergency, there has never been a more important time to ensure that we are able to marshal all of Glasgow’s expertise across a range of disciplines and sectors.
“As we approach COP26 later this year, Glasgow and Scotland have an incredible opportunity to demonstrate to the world how we are at the forefront of the fight against climate change – and this exciting new project is just one of the ways in which our University is leading the way in the city.
“Academics across the University are undertaking world-changing work tackling climate change with genuinely global impacts – but it’s equally important that we use our expertise to make our city more sustainable, and I am very pleased that this project will deliver a real impact in Govanhill.”
Principal of the University, Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli