Speeches

Speech by Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy.

In this speech Dutch Minister for Housing and the Central Government Sector Stef Blok explains how energy transition can be accelerated by measures which fit in with consumer behaviour.

Historically, the Canadian Government has partnered with the Home Building Industry to advance housing performance in Canada through voluntary building labeling programs. Industry Advocate Larry Brydon will look at the history of this Partnership, how it has transformed the housing market in Canada to date, and Canada’s work towards a Net Zero Building Labeling Program. Larry will discuss the results of a recent pilot program involving five Canadian production builders and the cold climate Net Zero homes they built across Canada.

Bill Dunster will show the evolution of zero carbon, zero waste design by the London based ZEDfactory starting from the first concepts in 1991 through to the latest climate neutral methodology proposed for a refurbishment of a mid 1970s office building in Amersfoort. He will concentrate on how product design and rethinking both construction and procurement methods can overcome common obstacles to delivering ZED developments, and how the integration of low carbon lifestyles into new developments and masterplans can create a high quality of life within a low environmental footprint. Two new affordable home solutions just launched in the UK and Holland will be discussed, followed by a proposal for a new zero carbon urban quarter in the historic ceramic city of Jingdezhen.

COP21 is the latest in a series of wakeup calls that our impact on spaceship earth needs to be brought back to zero. The biggest chance and challenge to realise this is found in the way we harvest and use energy. Energy for industrial use, transportation and the build environment. In 2010 the Energiesprong (energy leap) program challenged both the building industry, the social housing sector and both local and national authorities to come up with ambitious concepts to transform the built environment to a net energy neutral built environment. Just 5 years later this has resulted in realistic “zero-on-the-meter” concepts, which can upgrade existing residential buildings in net zero energy buildings with improved indoor environment and comfort levels, realised within a few working days, with zero impact on the living expenses for the users. In this speech by Ivo Opstelten, the key success factors and the current status of this accelerating movement will be disclosed.

In this speech Ronald Rovers will tell why we should take the climate agreement serious. By 2050 we do have to run our society without fossil fuels. With a focus on energy, we need an enormous CO2 reduction immediately, and a mass renovation of housing stock towards 0-energy. The challenge is to retrofit about 255 million houses in the EU before 2050, with only 34 years to go. This conference is important because the transition has started!

First, Wim Bakens will provide a short overview of the background and purpose of the SBE conference series. Utrecht SBE16 is one of 20 national conferences in the series this year, which will be followed by the global WSBE17 conference next year in Hong Kong. Afterwards Nils Larsson will share -on behalf of UNEP-SBCI and the SBE partnership- his reflections with you on COP21. The presentation will focus on Buildings Day and the launch of the Global Alliance for Building and Construction (Global ABC), which took place on Buildings Day on 3 December 2015. The presentation does not cover decisions taken by official delegates, but focuses instead on Buildings Day and especially on the purpose and agenda of the Global ABC.

Sustainability means optimising an ending system; we need transformation to thrive in a new, resilient system. Thomas Rau demonstrates that our so-called energy problem can easily be addressed by a mere change of attitude. However, the acute problem we are facing is the increasing scarcity of raw materials. Being an entrepreneur he sees chances and will explain the audience how to imbed this in daily life.