Trial / Demo
The University of Edinburgh was awarded approximately £250,000 Government funding and selected IES as an industry partner to help create a ‘living laboratory’ for advancing data analysis, modelling and simulation using its unique Digital Twin technology.
Last week Ivan McKee, Scotland's Minister for Trade, Investment and Innovation, announced that the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow would receive £500,000 of Scottish Government funding for two separate projects designed to demonstrate the benefits of partnerships between businesses, academics and the public sector in accelerating Scotland’s transition to a low carbon economy.
The Climate Emergency Collaboration Challenge was established to fund new business and academic partnerships to tackle climate change and assist Scotland’s transition to a net-zero emissions economy.
IES will work closely with the University of Edinburgh on this cross-sector collaboration to improve the way buildings are designed and constructed in the future to minimise their impact on the climate. The project aims to increase capacity for zero and low carbon innovation in construction and the built environment and will involve developing and testing digital tools, such as IES’s ICL Digital Twin technology, on-campus that reduce buildings' emissions by improving their energy performance when occupied.
“We’re very proud to be bringing our 25 years of experience and leading-edge sustainable analysis technology to this project. Tackling climate change has been on our agenda since IES was founded, so to be selected as an industry partner and given the opportunity to make a significant contribution to meeting Scotland’s zero-carbon targets is very exciting. Our goal in this project is to use our already developed Intelligent Communities Lifecycle (ICL) Digital Twin technology to provide a significantly enhanced level of analysis at all stages of the building lifecycle in order to both demonstrate the business benefits as part of the transition to a zero carbon future, and provide the University of Edinburgh with benchmarks and processes they can adopt that will guarantee improvements and consistency across their future projects.”
Don McLean, IES Founder & CEO
Despite significant investments having been made to-date in energy efficiency measures, renewables and low carbon technologies, more needs to be done to close the ‘performance gap’ between ambition and reality in public sector construction and the building management.
“The severity of the threat posed by climate change and the urgency with which responses are needed cannot be overstated. As one of the biggest global emitters of carbon, emissions from construction and the built environment must be significantly reduced if we are to reach net zero emissions in Scotland by 2045. The public sector has an important role to play in leading this transition and this is the challenge that we and our partners will address through this ambitious project, by developing innovative solutions and fostering effective and sustained partnership working.”
Dave Gorman, Director for Social Responsibility and Sustainability
This project aims to help create a step-change in emission reductions from public sector construction and the built environment up to 2045, by improving how building projects are designed, managed and implemented through early-stage decisions and better on-going management of building performance.
Alongside IES and the University of Edinburgh, project partners include Schneider Electric, Scottish Futures Trust, Robertson Group, Zero Waste Scotland, Construction Scotland Innovation Centre, EAUC, APUC (Advanced Procurement for Universities and Colleges), AUDE (Association of University Directors of Estates), Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation and the Sustainable Scotland Network.
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