Building renovation: where circular economy and climate meet

In the drive to reduce operational carbon emissions from buildings, focus has for a long time been on making buildings more energy efficient, and perhaps inadvertently favoured replacement of old building stock rather than upgrade. In recent years with a much greater focus shifting to embodied carbon of the construction materials, the balance sheet has been re-drawn giving retrofit projects a significant boost.

However, challenges remain with how best to re-use our existing building stock, how we realise deep retrofits of whole buildings and even more so how we de-construct buildings beyond their useful life and re-use these materials. This session will look at some of the challenges encountered in practice when incorporating parts of buildings or materials from demolition arisings into a new project.