There was cause for celebration throughout the West Midlands this week as Birmingham City Council’s Birmingham Energy Savers (BES) programme was announced as the winner of the Urban Retrofit Award by the World Green Building Council (WorldGBC).
The announcement came during the UN Climate Change Conference in Durban on Monday and marks a great triumph for the council, as well as the local businesses involved in the project. Birmingham stood alongside New York, Tokyo and San Francisco as the award winning cities.
The achievement is particularly poignant for Encraft as it recognises the continuing success of the original business model, formerly known as the “Birmingham Green New Deal”, which Encraft developed with BCC and Localise West Midlands 2 years ago. The model was later rebranded as Birmingham Energy Savers.
The BES programme, for which Encraft helped raise the initial £2.5 million of seed funding as well as supporting council staff with their procurement approach, is set to lead to £1.5 billion of green retrofit work over the next 15 years.
By 2026 the scheme aims to secure 60,000 ‘green’ jobs in the retrofitting of 160,000 houses and 2,500 non-domestic properties across Birmingham and the West Midlands.
From an environmental perspective, too, the project is set to establish the West Midlands as the leaders of a low carbon UK economy. By 2020 a 4.3 per cent reduction in current CO2 emissions is expected from domestic retrofits, and a further cut of 7.8 per cent is anticipated over the same period for non-domestic buildings.
Our contribution to this project was recognised in November 2010, when the Lord Mayor presented the city’s Attwood award to Encraft’s Managing Director Matthew Rhodes for his collaborative work on this project.
Cllr Paul Tilsley, Deputy Leader of Birmingham City Council, said:
“For Birmingham Energy Savers to be named as the best initiative of its type in the world is a stunning success for the city and the UK… I would like to thank every member of staff and all the partner organisations that have played a part in this win – the award is very much their prize.”
As one of only six awards to have been bestowed by the UN Encraft is proud to have supported Birmingham City Council in their achievements to date, and the success of the project highlights what can be accomplished when public and private sectors work together cohesively. As Paul King, CEO of the UK Green Building Council and chair of the WorldGBC Policy Task Force, said: “Birmingham’s leadership in urban retrofit is trailblazing, and highlights the critical role local authorities can and should play…if the public and private sectors work effectively together.”
http://www.encraft.co.uk/
http://www.encraft.co.uk/
