The UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) is developing a Climate Resilience Roadmap to support achieving a climate resilient built environment by 2050.
The roadmap will set metrics to help measure climate resilience, establish urgent priorities and industry-wide targets and identify essential actions, and policies to achieve them.
The Climate Resilience Roadmap builds on UKGBC’s Whole Life Carbon Roadmap, which launched at COP26 in Glasgow, and is being developed as part of the organisation’s Resilience and Nature Programme. UKGBC is currently recruiting for project partners and task group members, who will contribute to the project.
Smith Mordak, chief executive at UKGBC, said: “While we absolutely need to reduce our emissions to net zero as quickly as possible, even if we stopped releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere tomorrow, the climate will continue to change. We need to adapt not only to a zero carbon world, but to a less predictable climate.
“This means ensuring our buildings and infrastructure are ready to withstand increasingly extreme weather, but also ensuring that we have the social infrastructure in place so that climate breakdown stresses aren’t distributed unfairly. The technical, logistical, and social challenges are huge so please join us in working together to create a Resilience Roadmap for the UK built environment!”
Amanda Skeldon, director of climate and nature at JLL, added: “Having a clear understanding of the risks posed to buildings, and what that means for their resilience in the face of a changing climate is vital for the long-term sustainability of the built environment as a whole. JLL is pleased to be able to contribute to increasing understanding of how to measure, set targets and deliver resilience for the real estate industry, by working in partnership with UKGBC to develop the Climate Resilience Roadmap.”
Ashley Bateson, director at Hoare Lea, said: “The UK built environment faces extreme challenges from climate change. The impacts will potentially be felt by millions of people occupying and working in buildings that are not currently adapted to the projected warming and extended heat waves.
“Hoare Lea is therefore pleased to support the UKGBC Resilience Roadmap project. By leading the assessment of overheating analysis and reviewing the mitigation opportunities we aim to contribute to an important aspect of the UK’s Resilience Roadmap. This is an important collaborative project, and we are proud to contribute.”
