Sustainability Spotlight, September 2020 - Sustainable Tenements
Many people in Scotland live in beautiful, characterful tenement buildings dating from the mid-1800s to the 1910s. However, these structures carry with them maintenance challenges. Ensuring historic flats can become more environmentally sustainable and contribute to reducing our carbon footprint is a particular concern as Scotland moves toward Net Zero.
On 5 March 2020, the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (CaCHE), led by Prof Ken Gibb, announced a demonstration project, in collaboration with Southside Housing Association, Glasgow City Council, and Strathclyde University. The project will evaluate how carbon reduction may be achieved by a high-quality EnerPHit retrofit of a Glasgow tenement block.
Funded by the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) as part of its Climate Emergency Collaboration Challenge, the project will assess the scalability and replicability of the lessons learned for Glasgow’s wider pre-1919 tenement stock.
As Ken says in his introductory blog post: "The research project is an ambitious and multi-dimensional, multi-disciplinary one. It is an exciting opportunity to work on something that can make a genuine difference."
As well as the brief video intro below, there's an hour-long webinar with Q&A on the project here.
Photograph courtesy of John Tweedie (jtweedie1976), under Creative Commons CC-BY.