With leadership and support being shown by the Scottish Government through both policy and funding, councils in Scotland are now mandated to produce energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation strategies through the Local Heat and Energy Efficiency Strategies (LHEES) policy. These strategies are a vital step in scaling up and promoting ‘business as usual’ processes across Council teams to decarbonise and reduce energy use in domestic and non-domestic buildings inside and outside local authority control.

Glasgow City Council is now consulting on its draft Housing Strategy 2023 to 2028. Retrofit and decarbonisation are at the heart of the strategy. The strategy underlines Glasgow’s commitment to a just transition to Net Zero by meeting the retrofit challenge to reduce carbon emissions and increase energy efficiency of our existing homes, whilst also reducing fuel poverty. The strategy highlights the importance of new skills, research, and innovation, alongside essential partnerships that will drive forward change.

With an introductory speech by Cllr Kenny McLean, city convener for housing, development, built heritage and land use, the Glasgow Retrofit Summit will cover the LHEES and much more across three mornings of online presentations and discussions from Tuesday 28 February to Thursday 2 March 2023.

Attendees from local authority staff to social housing landlords to businesses and consultants in the building retrofit supply chain will hear from a range of speakers in the Scottish Government, Glasgow City Council and those at the forefront who are engaging with communities and the supply chain to build retrofit capacity.

The Summit schedule will include an update on Morning 1 from the Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council about progress to date on projects, with a particular focus on energy efficiency in social housing in the city, while on Morning 2, speakers from Skills Development Scotland and BE-ST Scotland will address the challenge of upskilling and re-skilling those in the construction industry to deliver projects at scale.

The focus on Morning 3 will be on how strategies and plans for the regeneration of places in the Glasgow City Region will include energy efficiency and decarbonisation objectives, such as the potential for heat networks, and the opportunities to reduce future energy use in city centre buildings re-purposed into residential accommodation.

“This is an important movement for Glasgow and our retrofit ambitions,” says Jennifer Sheddan (head of housing) from Glasgow City Council. “We have found Retrofit Summits to be hugely useful in building the network of organisations and expertise needed to achieve our objectives and this year’s Summit will help us take our plans to the next level by bringing together the right people to develop skills and resources needed to drive projects forward and help meet the ambitious target for Glasgow to become Net Zero Carbon City by 2030.”

Alongside the speakers, participants will benefit from the opportunity to hear about new technologies and building materials driving down carbon footprints, from the event’s partners: E.ON, Jigsaw, Adaptavate, IndiNature and Stelrad.

The Glasgow Retrofit Summit is free to attend online using the dynamic REMO event platform across three mornings from 9am-12pm from Tuesday 28 February to Thursday 2 March, enabling housing providers and local authority staff as well as installers, contractors, consultants and surveyors to drop in from any location to suit their schedules. Q&A sessions with a panel of the morning’s speakers and mingling with peers, speakers and sponsors at the virtual conference tables provide high quality networking without the travel time.

To sign up to attend this free online event, go to https://lowcarbonhomes.uk/events.