January 19, 2010

engineering a low-carbon built environment

Speakers:
Prof Doug King, visiting professor in building engineering physics, University of Bath
Dr Scott Steedman, Fellow, Royal Academy of Engineering

The Royal Academy of Engineering has published a new report detailing the challenges facing the built environment in the 21st century, including meeting 2050 targets to cut carbon emissions from buildings and to make all buildings carbon-neutral by 2020. The speakers outlined the emerging discipline of building engineering physics, which enables designers to manipulate the characteristics of buildings to improve energy efficiency, and argued for government to prioritise the training of skilled people to carry out essential engineering work.