AECB official statement supporting the signing of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe High-Performance Buildings Initiative

The AECB is delighted to participate in the official signing ceremony for the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE)’s High-Performance Buildings Initiative hosted by Construction Scotland Innovation Centre (CSIC) representing Scotland as the host nation for COP26. 

The AECB welcomes the creation of a collaborative global network of 26 international Centres of Excellence of High Performance Buildings (including CSIC) to provide education, training, and other critical resources to regional building industry practitioners, supporting local industry in the rapid development of buildings consistent with the UN Framework for energy efficiency standards in buildings.  

The AECB is launching the AECB CarbonLite™ Training Centre consolidating AECB’s professional advanced retrofit training recognised by the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) in the UK Government’s Heat and buildings strategy (October 2021) with reference to the e-learning AECB CarbonLite™ Retrofit course launched in 2016.  

BEIS identifies the urgent UK demand: “A current lack of installers, retrofit assessors, and retrofit co-ordinators is a major barrier to decarbonising the UK’s building stock.” 

The AECB has long championed a fabric-first whole-buildings and whole-system approach identified as the No.1 policy focus in the UK Government’s strategy. The AECB has developed a set of building standards and guidance including the unique self-certification AECB Retrofit Standard published in March 2021. These standards tackle historic underperformance and the performance gap when designing buildings, developed to equip UK construction to deliver better energy efficiency for a low carbon future. AECB is redeveloping the Low Energy Buildings Database (LEBD) as an international platform showcasing exemplar low energy buildings case studies.   

AECB is the longest established network of UK construction professionals dedicated to building a low carbon future. To accelerate the UK’s journey to Net Zero carbon, the AECB runs highly professional e-learning retrofit training. The success of the e-learning AECB CarbonLite™ Retrofit course has resulted in a strong community of CarbonLite™ Graduates across the UK

AECB has launched CPD capabilities with the new annual CPD Cert. Building Energy Modelling using PHPP with TU Dublin. AECB is developing a package of existing and new training aligning with the UK PAS 2035 framework.  

Andy Simmonds, CEO Association for Environment Conscious Building (AECB) 3rd November 2021

For details of UNECE and the Sustainable Development Goals  please click here