July 19th 2021

Net-Zero Week UK - 'HOW' do we take action?

Net-Zero Week UK - 'HOW' do we take action?

This week marks Net-Zero Week, the UK’s national awareness week. Its aim is to highlight the challenges we face in getting to net-zero and provide advice on what we as businesses and consumers can do to help us get there. 

As we know, Climate Change is the biggest threat to humanity and the pace of global warming is increasing at an alarming rate, as highlighted in the latest WMO report. Weeks like the UK’s Net-Zero week are great for highlighting the problem, raising awareness and telling us what we need to do, but they rarely get down to the detail of ‘how’ we do it.

We know that getting to net-zero is no easy feat. Understanding climate change and figuring out how to navigate the path to net-zero can be a minefield. There are so many factors to consider, and if you own or manage a number of buildings, working out a net-zero strategy can be extremely overwhelming. Where do you start? 

It’s important to seek out solutions that can provide you with reliable information to help weigh up the various options available to you, de-risking the decisions you need to make along the path to net-zero. There will be no “one size fits all” solution to climate change, but with the right tools, capable of transforming the vast amount of data now available to us into information, we can move forward knowing that our decisions have been based on intelligent, reliable and well-informed insights to maximise our impact.

Digital Twins for the Built Environment such as the ICL are one solution that can support this approach. Working off shared knowledge and data, these tools can empower everyone, regardless of their connection or role in the use of a building, to make climate-wise decisions and improvements. Not only can they provide dashboards and tools to drive operational efficiencies, track progress towards targets, measure and verify results, and test which retrofit or improvement investments are the best in any given situation. They can also be used to engage with building occupants and citizens to guide action and inspire change, gather feedback on proposals, policies and targets, and inform on progress made.

Whilst weeks like Net-Zero week are encouraging and help highlight the issue, what we need now is much more urgent action. In recent months, in the lead up to COP26 we have seen our political leaders stepping up their climate targets, but we need to make sure that they are held to account on these. We also need to set more vigorous climate action into motion, across all levels of industry and society, wherever possible.

We can’t continue to follow the status quo without expecting to see some devastating consequences. There is now little time for error, and this is exactly what our technology can provide.

Find out for yourself how our technology can support your route to net-zero by joining one of our web demos and downloading a free trial: www.iesve.com/trial-demo