Towards Net Zero London conference on sustainable development in buildings gathers leading experts from across the construction industry to tackle carbon emissions

• Monday, 16 November 2009

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Global forum for cutting carbon emissions in buildings starts in London on Friday 20th November

London 16th November 2009: Just weeks before the Copenhagen summit on climate change Towards Net Zero, a global forum for knowledge for cutting carbon in building construction and operation will this week hear from the World Building Council’s director of Energy Efficiency in Buildings as a host of industry experts and players gather in London at a brand new forum for information sharing.

Featuring concurrent conference streams covering Design & Engineering, Policy, Economics & Finance Drivers, Advances in Technology and Renewables Generation, TowardsNET-ZERO London is being established as the leading source of information and new contacts for industry professionals concerned with enhancing energy efficiency in the design and operation of buildings.

Opening Keynotes

Christian Kornevall, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Director - Energy Efficiency in Buildings Programme – WBCSD’s EEB Programme appraised the scope for reducing carbon emissions from buildings and developed policy recommendations to achieve this - economic models developed were used by the Peterson Institute for International Economics to estimate costs of carbon abatement in industrial and industrialising regions.

Paul Waide, prior to his recent appointment as Director of Navigant Consulting’s European Energy Practice, Paul was the Energy Efficiency Senior Policy Analyst at the Paris-based International Energy Agency and has 17 years’ international experience on the impact of policy on markets in Europe, The Americas, China and Asia-Pacific and is author of ‘Light's Labour's Lost’ - Policies for Energy-Efficient Lighting produced in support of the G8 Plan of Action.

UK and international speakers include:

Victor Olgyay - Victor Olgyay is a Principal Architect at Rocky Mountain Institute – responsible for developing the strategy for the highly publicised energy efficiency retrofit of the Empire State Building, predicted to result in a 40% reduction in energy consumption and carbon emissions.

Tony Moseley, Assistant Director, Elephant & Castle Regeneration project – a £1.5bn PPP which will enable the same volume of services to homes and businesses to operate at only 20% of the energy usage and carbon emissions – this project, along with 4 others globally, was nominated by the Clinton Climate Initiative as one of their best of practice ‘Climate Positive Programmes’.

Russell Gilchrist – Practice Leader, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (architects) – responsible for driving the design of the ultra-low energy Pearl River Tower - a 70+ story tower block in Guangzhou, Southern China.

Other leading figures in the UK and international property sector will be represented.

DATE = 20 NOVEMBER 2009
LOCATION = THE TOWER HOTEL, LONDON
URL = WWW.TOWARDSNETZERO.COM/LONDON

Journalists interested in attending should contact Nick Morris:
E: n.morris@dcd-holdings.com
T: 00 44 (0) 20 7426 4817

Towards Net Zero is organised by DCD Holdings, London

Background: With ever tighter constraints on energy efficiency arising from a rapidly evolving policy environment are initiating radical changes in the way that buildings are designed, built and operated. In the UK in 2010 the Carbon Reduction Commitment will introduce mandatory cap and trade legislation to all large private and public sector organisations and from 2016 all new residential buildings must be net zero energy. Current revisions to the Energy Performance in Buildings Directive will include the requirement for all new buildings to be net zero energy from the end of 2018: this is especially problematic for buildings in high density metropolitan environments. Locally, the Greater London Authority has recently upgraded its requirements for all new builds to generate 20% of their energy needs from on-building and onsite renewable sources.

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