Summit puts sustainability within commercial building services in focus
Pump manufacturer Grundfos recently held a summit with some of the industry’s top sustainability experts and leading energy users to help them understand and overcome the challenges and pitfalls we all face and to help develop robust plans to meet interim and final targets as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Bringing together leading contractors, consultants and senior engineers with sustainability directors, research managers and representatives of CIBSE, experts who, every day, face decisions on energy and sustainability in an open and inclusive environment where everyone was encouraged to contribute.
Against the backdrop of one of London’s finest five-star luxury hotels, the Rosewood in Holborn, Grundfos’ UK Managing Director, Glynn Williams, welcomed a guest list of 120.
At the event, Ross Crighton, Senior Regional Sales Manager, CBS Aftermarket at Grundfos, explained the crucial role that existing commercial buildings must play in meeting net Zero targets. Existing buildings in the UK currently use between 20 and 50% more energy than they should, he explained, so this should be the first place to look when staring along the path.
Many of these buildings are ten years old or more, and the technology available when they were built was nowhere near as efficient as today’s digitised E pumps, smart pumps that can judge for themselves when the system is not operating efficiently and make the necessary adjustments to maintain optimisation.
Grundfos Climate Director Thomas Schrøder was next to speak as he introduced the company’s overriding desire to make life better for people throughout the world, moving from ambition to action by bringing clean water to millions, setting up charitable businesses to support the underprivileged and those isolated communities in some of the world’s toughest environments or developing new and innovative systems to protect precious water supplies and use water more efficiently and sustainably.
Thomas was followed by Mace’s Head of Building Services Construction, Paul Connolly, who outlined the company’s sustainable development, from becoming a carbon-neutral business in 2020, to its pledge to cut its own emissions by 10% every year and introduced a new platform the company is developing that will save clients 10 million tonnes of CO2 by 2026.
Next up was Skanska’s head of Sustainability, Sharon Maynard, who went on to discuss the carbon evaluation and tools to support the company’s plans to achieve a 50% reduction in carbon emissions by the end of this decade, and reach Net Zero by 2045, five years ahead of the Government’s target. As well as to reduce carbon intensity by 130 tonnes per £million pounds of revenue by 2030.
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