Webinar on Making the Case for Building Reuse through Better Metrics for Avoided Operational & Embodied Carbon

Speakers: Hannah, Mark Thompson-Brant, Lori Ferriss, Michael Netter, Stephanie Phillips

Hannah: [audio cut off] many of you back for more in the chat, so I'm glad we're managing to keep providing something that interests you. So today we are on to our fifth Climate Heritage Network webinar as part of the Culture by Climate Series. So for those of you that haven't been to one of these before and aren't aware of the Climate Heritage Network, so the Climate Heritage Network was founded in 2019 by organisations from around the world that were committed, and still are committed, to enhancing the role of arts, culture and heritage in tackling the climate emergency. And it is open to everyone: government agencies, civil society, business, universities, indigenous peoples organisations. And I think Andrew Pott has added a link in the chat a little bit further up that you can click on to find out more about how you can join.

The Climate Heritage Network was launched in Edinburgh last year, and a little later last year at the Madrid COP meeting, we launched our Madrid to Glasgow Arts, Culture and Heritage Climate Action Plan. And the presentations that we've been collaborating with the Climate Heritage Network on Historic England to bring to you are reflecting the commitments and the activities in that action plan. So if you haven't caught up with any of the others, they are available on our web page for you to view the recordings, and I'd strongly encourage you to do that. There's some really fantastic presentations there. So without further ado, I'm going to pass you on to Mark, who's going to introduce speakers and introduce the working group. Thanks, Mark.

Mark: Thanks, Hannah, and hello and greetings, everyone, from Ottawa, Canada. As Hannah said, my name is Mark Thompson-Brant, I'm going to be your moderator today. The Climate Heritage Network's Working Group 3 is coordinated by the California State Historic Preservation Office and the Zero Net Carbon Collaboration for Existing & Historic buildings. This membership comes from individuals and organisations, however, from around the world. Our workplan is actually the title of this session, making the case for building reuse through better metrics for avoided operational and embodied carbon, and that's exactly what we're going to do today. But we're going to do something very specific within that. So, Working Group 3, this vision of a mission, I would like to highlight two words within that--

[They discuss mark's loss of sound and move to the presentation of Lori]

Lori: I can try-- I don't know exactly what Mark was going to say, but I'll take a try at finishing his introduction very briefly, and I'll just say that in order to tackle this challenge of making the case for building reuse for better metrics, we formed three subgroups. We decided that really the case was focused around these three different areas. One was really about data. The second is about tools and the third is about communication. And each of these prongs, we felt was sort of equally critical in moving forward with developing the case, both making it from a technical perspective and then being able to shape it and communicate it to the audiences that we're targeting. So you'll be hearing from each of the three subgroups today, starting with me. So I'll be talking about data. I'm Lori Ferriss. I am an architect equity scaling in Boston, Massachusetts. I'm also chair of the Zero Net Carbon Collaboration for Existing & Historic Buildings with Mark, and I'm really excited to be here today. Thanks to Historic England for hosting this series. This is great.

So I'm going to start us off with the smallest scale-- with the final scale of revolution here, talking really about the data and the numbers to start us off. So the conversations around climate change and climate action are all about data and projections, concentrations of greenhouse gases, surface temperature of the planet, urban population, etc., and as heritage professionals, we really need to learn to speak this language and to speak it well. We all know that there are many tangible and intangible benefits to preserving cultural heritage. We know that reusing existing building is inherently sustainable. But at this point it's critical that we quantify the environmental benefits of building conservation in order to have a seat at the climate action table and to be able to communicate our message effectively.

And in order to make this quantitative case for building reuses climate action, we need data. Data is the underlying prerequisite for creating tools, for writing policies and for shaping an argument for heritage reuse that can be communicated to the public. We need the right kinds of data, then we need it to be high quality to both guide responsible reuse of our built heritage and to prove its value to others. And this need is really urgent.

The approach of the subgroup has been first to understand what data we need, to collect existing data across all of the regions and organisations represented by our membership, to identify gaps in that data and the hurdles or challenges we face to getting the data we need and then to figure out how to move forward in order to fill those gaps. And obviously, the determinations made by this subgroup are heavily linked to the needs identified by the other two subgroups, both for tools and communications, who you will hear from [indistinct].

I'm going to start by introducing this recent study, which is really a perfect summary of both the existing data we have and that we need and the challenges we're facing. In 2018, Historic England Commission [indistinct] Conservation International to carry out an LCA study of historic or traditional buildings, and the study was really all about making the case for building reuse by quantifying carbon benefits. The study set out to compare the carbon footprint of two retrofit projects to the carbon footprint of comparable new construction. And the goal was to do this analysis without an LCA tool to see how it can be done without paid software by any practitioner.

So in order to carry out this study, a number of types of data were needed, data on typical refurbishment projects, which include building characteristics, specifications, etc. It required data on building materials and building components such as U values and particularly as related to traditional building materials. And it also needed data on the global warming potential, or the embodied carbon footprint, which came in this case through environmental product declarations or EPDs. And it was found that this data was difficult to source, which it was quite challenging to the project. We've also discovered that a lot of the tools that were reviewed fall short of requirements for applying LPA to traditional buildings. So in this single report, we're able to identify the data we need, what we have and some of the gaps that exist, as well as the urgency in acquiring this data.

So I'm going to quickly run through the different types of data streams that we really need. The first category is quantitative data. This includes information about existing buildings, how many we have, how old they are, what they're made, etc., data about building materials and properties, which includes building physics, the environmental impacts, which are things including embodied carbon or about global warming potential, data about energy efficiency we gain when we retrofit buildings, the financial data and data about external or broader implications such as transportation beyond the footprint of the building.

The fact this type of data is qualitative data, and this is particularly, I think, a particular challenge to making this case for heritage conservation, we have a lot of information that's difficult to put a metric to. This is particularly around intangible information, but this includes retrofit best practices, heritage values, traditional knowledge, social costs and others. And I will note that there's a lot of great work being done in this area, a lot of it outside of this subgroup. But there's still really a challenge and a lack of unifying metrics [indistinct] time to compare the tangible and intangible benefits. There are also a wide range of data sources here, and this is both a challenge and a benefit when we're looking at data that comes from all ranges and scales of government, from private institutions, from trade organisations, from individual. It's really coming from everywhere in an inconsistent way. But it also offers a lot of opportunity to really harness and gather data.

Now I want to walk through some examples of data that we do have already. This first is some statistics about existing building stock that come from a recent report by the American Institute of Architects, which describes a national level, how many buildings we have from which eras and what types of buildings they are. What challenges that we face with this type of existing building data is really a lack of consistency regionally and even within the US, for example, but also around the world, inconsistent resolutions; we may know at a gross scale what we have, but we don't necessarily know what that looks like at an individual building scale, and just a lack of accuracy sometimes.

The next example is about heritage data. This is an image from Historic England, which is really a beautiful, beautiful little info graphic that describes the types of listed properties throughout England. And I wish we had this type of great data for other locations as well. But one challenge here is that while we have this information about listed properties, we don't really have the same level of information about the existing buildings stock, buildings that may have heritage value, may be significant, but aren't necessarily protected.

Now, this type of data is environmental data. This slide just gives you a few examples of LCA data sources, and this is the type of data that really gives you those environmental properties. So, for example, looking at what these databases can tell you on material carbon footprint. You know, if you hear there are a lot of examples, these are all particularly around North America. But the challenge that we have here is that they are inconsistent. So you can't really compare data from one source to another. They tend to focus on new building material so it can be challenging to find data for historic or traditional building materials. And there really just isn't enough data to make it really regionally specific or to cover all of the materials that we need it to.

I'm going to give two examples now of some tools that begin to bring in that qualitative data. The first is OSCAR, or the Online Sustainable Conservation Assistance Resource, which was developed by the Association for Preservation Technology International, and this is really an information management tool. It does host databases that are around supporting retrofit properties for heritage buildings and the four databases are actions, or design strategies are actions around inherently sustainable features, repair of these energy improvements and resilience, and the tool uses all these data to inform an interactive [indistinct] builder, which establishes a clear process of understanding of buildings, inherently sustainable features, collecting relevant actions to repair existing elements and then additional actions to enhance their sustainable performance and improve overall resilience. So here we're starting to combine some of the intangible data with the quantifiable data.

Another example from the EU, from this side of the pond, is [indistinct]. This is a really amazing repository of retrofit case studies which provide essential information on building construction, heritage assessment, building material specifications, energy efficiency, building sources and comfort, as well as [indistinct] refurbishment solutions and products. And I'll note that along the line of case studies, there are a number of published case studies that do prove out the carbon benefits of building reuse, [indistinct] that reusing an existing building rather than building new can reduce embodied carbon by up to 85%, and that retrofitting existing buildings almost always results in lower total carbon emissions than building new by the year 2050. The challenge is that we tend to treat these as discrete case studies rather than as a data stream that can be analysed and harvested. So I'll put that out as a call to all of you that as you're putting together these case studies, think about how we can make them not only singular resources, but how we can think of them as a larger dataset.

So just to reiterate, we do have a lot of great data to start with. We also have a lot of challenges which are that this environmental data tends to focus on new construction. We don't have consistent metrics to compare historic and existing buildings and heritage values to the environmental benefit. There is a lack of material disclosure. This is a problem for both new construction and for heritage conservation, actually. There's also an inconsistent knowledge and interest in lifecycle assessment in the heritage sector. I think that the notion of embodied carbon and carbon accounting is really just starting to pick up steam even in the new design field, and so we really need to catch up and make sure that we're speaking that language. And then again, there isn't really a good repository for this data. We have a lot of case studies, a lot of references, but no great database source. So I'd like to end with a poll in helping us think about next steps and where the priorities are to develop this data that we need. We'd like to hear from you, which data stream is most important to you in supporting you making the case for heritage conservation as climate action?

Hannah: So if you'd like to cast your votes now.

Lori: Very exciting.

Hannah: If you do tick the other option, you might like to tell us what other means by using the chat box. OK, that looks like some results there for you, Lori.

Lori: Great. All right, so it looks like by far the winner here is total avoided carbon possible through building reasons. That's great. All right, that's helpful. I think that that's what we all need-- that's the case that we need to make here, so that is helpful. And I will say that in support of helping us collect that data, we would very much appreciate-- I know I see some coming in already, but additional sources of LCA studies or data that you know of either through your own practice or through your own organisation. We're really looking to collect all of the data that's currently out there now.

Hannah: OK, I'll close that poll for you, Lori.

Lori: All right.

OK, well, I'm going to end with the poll. I do have some more resources-- there are a lot of great studies here. I know some of them have been coming through in the chat, so hopefully they'll be very useful to you and feel free to reach out if you'd like any additional specific resources related to any aspect of data, and we'll try to help you out. Now, I'm going to pass it on to Michael.

Mark: Hello, Michael.

Michael: Hello, thank you very much, Lori. I will take it from here on tools. So I am Michael Netter of the Institute of Historic Building Conservation [indistinct], and tools are intricately related to data. I guess I'll start by saying, why are tools important? What we're seeing is huge, enormous demand to decarbonise the building sector and achieve net zero carbon. But currently the tools and policy are generally geared towards new build. In fact, many buildings start their projects, or start the environmental credentials of their projects, after the demolition phase, which is clearly not an ideal situation, so we need tools to demonstrate that reusing buildings has a much lower carbon impact than building new and also has socio-cultural benefits as well.

And further than that, once we decide to do a retrofit, we need to be able to analyse different options, and in depth, to achieve something that we call optimised retrofit, where essentially throughout the entire project and also lifespan of the building, we're looking for best-case, lowest-carbon usage. So I'll refer here to the graph on my slide, which comes from Robin Pender for an article in WSP's context earlier this year called Rethinking Retrofit. And the idea is, if you compare a baseline with a simplistic analysis, sometimes interventions will look quite good from a payback period. But once you start adding detail and having better analyses and including things like repair and eventual replacement of some of these interventions, these analyses get worse and the time scales get worse, and in fact, sometimes you can demonstrate that interventions aren't called for at all.

So we really need tools that can help us understand what these best outcomes are, how they can work together and how we can achieve optimised retrofit. Right now, it's a very labour-intensive process. Watching the seminar a couple of weeks ago where an architect had a great example of an optimised retrofit project, but you could tell how much time and effort it took and how much of the spreadsheets and just sort of making things up went because the tools out there [exist?].

So Working Group 3, our approach to this problem, we basically came up with three things. First of all, we're performing a mapping exercise, sort of scoping study or a gap analysis of what are the tools that are out there. And in starting this, what we've realised already is that we've come across [indistinct] tools that we didn't know existed before we started working together, so that leads us to our second point of becoming a sort of network for exchanging information and best practice as these tools develop, and exactly how we do that and how we communicate is something that definitely we'll talk about in a few minutes.

And the third thing we're looking at is because some of these tools don't yet exist or are in their development phase, we're looking at sort of specifying what an ideal tool, or an ideal suite of tools look like. And that really-- we're hoping to really help drive the development and also to ensure that the values like social values and cultural values are included in the development of [indistinct].

So when we started our sort of mapping exercise, we realised that there's different categories of [tools?], and the first category, is sort of the lowest sort of level, are tools that help us collect data, so things like thermal-imaging cameras, moisture sensors, temperature and humidity sensors. And as technology improves and as these sensors become connected to the Internet of Things, we're expecting to see a lot more data available, which is obviously a good thing. But the other thing, and Lori mentioned this as well, is the qualitative data from people. It's so important, things like comfort, health and wellbeing need to be included in the analysis or else [indistinct].

Once we have data coming in, then we look at another category of tools, which are databases and specifications. And as Lori mentioned, these need to be standardised. They need to be reliable. So there's a few databases out there, Circular Ecology's ICE database. There's also the NBS Source tool is in development, which looks promising. We also have the BRE Green guide. And then just to mention, EPCs as well, so energy performance certificates, active buildings rating, and I won't go into too much detail on these except to say that at the moment, the way they're put together is not too kind to traditional buildings. This is a real problem, because if you're looking at comparing different options and you have an APC that underrates the energy performance of an existing building, then your analysis starts off on the wrong foot. Additionally, there can be databases of buildings, or building typologies, and that's what the UK Green Building Council's RAP database is. And then once we have our databases, then we need tools to be able to use this data, and here's where we get really into the meat of the tools and the really interesting developments in information management tools, modelling tools, like psychoanalysis tools.

So the STBA guidance will-- I think a lot of us are familiar with this, but this is a really good sort of high-level tool that allows especially owners to see what single particular intervention in their home or building, all the various impacts that it might have and some of the different places to start looking at these various impacts. They're also developing right now a survey tool that will enhance the survey of historic and traditional buildings. Lori mentioned the OSCAR tool. Just to add to what she said, this is generally for the North American continent and I'm told analyses sort of a broader range of building typologies as well, which is [indistinct].

Then there's some tools that really get down into the nitty gritty of looking at materials and different options and exactly what impact they'll have. There was a few commercially available. One Click LCA is one of them. Another one is the Green Bill calculator. This has been around for a little while, but right now there are retrofit modules being developed and expected out very soon, which is very promising to see. The last thing I'll say just for now on information management tools is the idea of a building renovation passport. It's a somewhat new idea, but essentially what this is, is it's trying to give owners a platform to track what is proposed to be done to their building, what is being done by whom and when, and also to give them some insight into how their building should behave, which in some cases could be different than it was before a retrofit.

And then the final category of tools we're looking at are things like standards, guidance and training. So how to guide professionals to use these tools or to develop retrofit plans or tools that don't exist. So we have guidance like past 2035 and 2038 here in the UK. These are guidance documents that help guide retrofit projects. They're quite complicated, but they're really a risk analysis approach where they have really defined roles and responsibilities. And past 2035 is for domestic buildings that's been released. Plus 2038 is for non-dwellings, which is in [indistinct] right now but is expected soon. And then there's documents like the building resilience guidelines out of Canada, the IHBC has retrofitting traditional buildings guidance. The SEDA has a sustainable renovation guide. Organisations like Historic England and Historic Environment Scotland have really, really good guidance out there as well, so it's really coming along.

Then, of course, that leads us to training because we need professionals to be trained in order to follow the guidance and understand what the tools are telling them and being able to use them appropriately. And most professionals in the sector are educated in university to go on to new builds. So it brings up a whole point of skills and training, and there are a few bodies out there. The CIOB Academy is one, Environment Studies Centre is another that to give really good-quality training in teaching professionals how to approach retrofit projects. And not only is training needed, but it's well and good to offer training or to offer good guidance, but if people ignore it, then that's not very effective. So we also need to work on the policy end. And I know the Climate Heritage Network as one of their goals is to help drive improvement on the policy end as well.

That's it for my presentation. I'd like to ask a poll now. Do you we have the poll? So basically, we're asking, as we develop, or as we look to develop, these tools, especially the life cycle analysis tools, which feature would you most like to see in order to help you generate better outcomes?

Hannah: OK, we've got some results starting to come in for you, Michael. And again, if anybody would like to add any comments into the chat, they're welcome to.

Michael: Yes, certainly tools that take input from actual data gathered, I think would be really, really important, and it's interesting to see that is sort of equal to explanatory pros and cons, and I imagine that's a tool for the higher-level owners, when we can approach people, sort of [indistinct]. Yeah, thank you, that's very interesting. I guess now I'll hand it over to-- I don't know if Mark's back on. [indistinct] or if we want to go straight over to Stephanie.

Mark: Thanks, Michael. I am back on, apparently. I hope you can all hear me. Michael and Lori, excellent. I will maybe at the end go over you folks and where you are at. But in the meantime, we go to our third speaker. Interestingly, Working Group 3 has three speakers today, one from the private sector practitioner, one from a public sector practitioner and one from a non-government organisation practice, so it's quite interesting. Now we go to our public sector practitioner, Stephanie Phillips, who's with the city of San Antonio, Texas, and a senior person in the Office of Historic Preservation. Stephanie?

Stephanie: Thank you, Mark. So, thank you so much, Historic England, for having us and for Lori and Michael for those great presentations. I'm going to kind of round it out with the biggest umbrella, the biggest scale of our work group, which is communications. And I wish I was here to tell you that in these past few short months, our subgroup has solved the challenge of communicating in the carbon benefits of reuse and retrofitting buildings, like just solved it, but alas, that's not quite the case quite yet. However, we'll be sharing the work we've done thus far, where we're going and some examples from across the world that help illustrate the importance of communication.

So one of the long-range goals for this work group is to inform policy decision making in climate action planning, utilising the data and tools we develop. This is both a very big, in terms of scale, and a critically important goal, and our third subgroup communications is poised to help achieve this through strategic messaging. So some roles that we've defined as a subgroup include identifying key messaging from the other subgroups of Work group 3, define our target audiences, source and maintain examples from across the world, identify communication tools and establish metrics. And sort of as a summary, we see ourselves as translators in a way, distilling complex information and to clear impactful messaging. As you heard in the previous presentations, we're handling a lot of complex data, so communications is a key tool to help us make that data effective at multiple scales.

So one of the first internal items that we worked on as a subgroup, was the creation of a working glossary of terms. So we wanted to establish a baseline vocabulary within our own working group to ensure that we all use the same terms for the same ideas. So on the screen is an example of a few of the terms that we've been workshopping as a group, including carbon storing materials and embodied carbon. The first we realised it was really important to delineate between carbon sequestering and carbon storing materials, and the latter we emphasised the importance of differentiating between energy and carbon. And this exercise, which is ongoing, helps us ensure that we're using the same language in our own spaces so that when we extend our message beyond our internal work group, the message is consistent and clear.

One of the next steps which we're still working on for nothing is developing our target audiences, so you can see in this sort of mind map, we're starting to delineate different scales of audiences as well as branching into more specific subsets of those audiences. So we anticipate that this will shift a bit as we work symbiotically with the other subgroups. Defining audiences initially is really important for determining which data we want to collect and which features we want to include in our tools, just as it's important to take those tools and data and package them for specific audiences, so it's sort of a 'both/and'.

Next is determining the communication channels we have at our disposal and how we might intend to reach our audiences using one or many. We anticipate that the channels we utilise will certainly vary for different audiences and groups, but it's important to map out the channels that we have at our disposal, as well as the benefits and potential drawbacks of each as we make progress in communicating our messages. So a major next step for our subgroup is developing a communications plan and establishing near-term priorities to make progress towards those long-term goals of the entire Work Group 3.

So here's a brief visual of our high-level tasks as part of that plan, determining our items or sub-goals, describing them succinctly to guide our efforts and defining a clear purpose, as well as determining our actions to ensure that our goals are met. So for our group, something that serves as sort of like a baseline for us, something that we constantly remind ourselves is making the case for carbon benefits. Every use needs to feel real for audiences. And I kind of want everyone to visualisation for a moment the turtle with a straw on its nose. I didn't want to include the photo because it's truly heart-breaking and it's only 09:30 where I am, and it's just too early for, you know, pictures like that. But I think all of us can recall the collective power of that image and sort of the domino effect that it's had in illuminating our plastic pollution crisis and influencing business behaviour, like Starbucks eliminating their straws and redesigning their cups and influencing kind of a cascade of environmental policy.

So here in San Antonio, we're working on a deconstruction and salvage policy, meaning a mandate that if a building does have to come down, that its parts and pieces are reused instead of landfilled. And our colleagues in Portland, Oregon in the US have a deconstruction policy, and they ended up calculating that one house deconstruction, meaning salvaging the material instead of landfilling it, has the equivalent carbon offset of avoiding the use of 5.4 million plastic straws. Again, one house deconstruction – which is still building removal; it's not [indistinct] reuse in place – has the equivalent carbon offset of avoiding the use of 5.4 million plastic straws, so by proxy, it's very likely that building reuse would yield an even higher offset if you're using that fancy straw calculation.

So I share that example because Portland's charge has been to figure out what is our industry straw in the Turtles nose? And I use this kind of as a dual example to illustrate the importance of collaborating with industries that the arts, culture and heritage sector may not always engage with, like deconstruction and salvage to work towards common goals, but also to tap into shared value systems, including those that are publicly timely, like the reduction of straw usage. So to do that, we're looking at illustrating impact at scale, meaning sourcing locally rooted examples that have the potential to be translated in a way to be internationally impactful. And I'll show a quick two examples to illustrate kind of that communication.

So one comes from Spain. This is a fantastic report produced by Versus - Vernacular Heritage Sustainable Architecture, and the report is linked for a reference. I highly recommend combing through it. This is a great example on the screen of a really succinct, engaging visualisation that illustrates where building reuse and retrofit fits within an existing, barely recognisable value system, which are the three centre benefits: environmental, socioeconomic and socio-cultural. So being able to position our work within existing and understood structures and matrices helps develop that exposure to our work and develop a shared communication strategy.

So this portion of this study on the screen looked at advantages of adaptive reuse from different perspectives, and the bottom line is especially compelling to me, particularly numbers 11, 12 and 13. So as an example, this study explored the context of repairing and replacing a window. For those that are in the heritage sector, it always comes down to windows. The absolute cost of window repair versus replacement may be more or less equal, but the investment in a new window is mainly going to another city or even in another country, specifically where the factory producing the window is located. However, repairing the window locally in an historic structure likely will keep the money local through a tradesperson who is also likely a contractor that is living nearby and contributing to that local economy. So what the study does is illustrate that this is something that policymakers will understand and appreciate about our work in our messaging. So I highly recommend reading through that report to see more examples of how to kind of succinctly deliver that message.

Another example comes from right here in San Antonio, Texas. Our office partners with a local non-profit which owns the big, beautiful building you see on the screen, called the Kelso House, which we are utilising as a hands-on learning lab for trades education as we work to restore it after almost 20 years of vacancy. So we've created a web page as well as an Instagram account, if you want to follow us, @kelsohouse, to document our efforts and capture critical photos and testimonials that we can share with policymakers and people in related and tangential industries to illustrate the importance of building reuse.

And this next slide – sorry, it's kind of skewed – serves as really our international announcement of an amazing partnership that we've entered into just this very week with local architecture firm, Lake Flato, which was named as the number one architecture firm in 2019 by Architect magazine. They do fantastic work centred on sustainable design, and through their pro bono programme for non-profits, they are going to help us achieve zero carbon certification from the International Living Future Institute, for the Kelso House. This will be the first residential scale certification of this kind in San Antonio and potentially the first certification in general in our city. And we plan to extensively document the process through our existing communication channels that I mentioned, which will prioritise reuse, the inclusion of salvage materials, the use of local labour and, where required, selecting the most carbon-friendly new materials.

So this is an example of a local case study documented through various communication strategies that can serve as sort of an international model or example for how we 1. Communicate the importance of this kind of work, and 2. Collect data in a meaningful way to help contribute to the creation of tools that can be used for similar projects all across the world. And to kind of echo something that Lori said in her presentation, through this case study, we aim to not only have this to serve as a singular resource to benefit the argument for reuse in our specific city, but as an example that can be part of a larger data set as we work to build the data we need to develop the tools that Michael mentioned.

So, that's the end of my presentation. And Mark, did you want to jump into this poll for us?

Mark: Yes, thanks, Stephanie. You know, that's great news that Lake Flato have joined you folks. That's going to be an amazing project, and I think it'll be a real bellwether for refocusing the industry off of new construction and onto existing rehabilitation construction, which is so important in the fight against climate change.

So, first poll, who's your primary current target audience when communicating the carbon benefits of building, reuse and retrofit? So all of you on the call – and there are many; thank you for joining us – are from very different places and very different slices of our sector within the arts, culture and heritage. Sometimes some of you want to talk to each other and that would be your first choice. But you have many other potential target audiences that you want to get across the message to. And for all of us, it's going to be different. I'm going to pick for me. I'm going to pick developers. There we go. We're up to 16%. Great. The other one I would pick would be policymakers. But each of us, you know, are at a different station, so we're going to have really a wide variety. And I'm hoping there's going to be three or four that are going to rise to the top here, and it looks like it's going that way. Certainly all of the above is a good category, too.

Hannah: Again, if anybody would like to use the chat box to explain their answers or ask any more questions about this poll.

Mark: And Hannah, I think Stephanie has another poll question. When we're finished with this one, perhaps you can introduce that one.

Hannah: Yes, absolutely. And Mark, did you want to take an opportunity to tell us what you were trying to tell us before you were so rudely cut off by the technology gremlins earlier?

Mark: Yeah, maybe that this is a good time while people are polling in. Focusing on the words 'building reuse' and 'carbon'. Building reuse includes maintenance, rehabilitation, retrofit, adaptive use of this massive stock of buildings we have globally. Carbon is that awful little substance that is killing our planet, more importantly, how understanding more about carbon in buildings can help us all recognise that decarbonizing existing and historic buildings while retaining their value is a significant climate action. This is not a message that has gotten through to the industry or to policymakers, and of course, Stephanie and her group in communications are going to completely change that around by the time COP26 comes around in a year from now, aren't you, Stephanie?

Stephanie: Absolutely.

Mark: To understand more about carbon and buildings, we ascertained – as Lori so sprightly said in covering for my technological downfall there – data tools and communications, and that's what we've been doing. At the very end. I am going to thank the speakers, and you'll hear more about them. But let's move on to the other poll question that Stephanie had for us. Hannah?

Hannah: Yes. So, what resource would help you communicate the carbon benefits of reuse and retrofit? So you've heard from a few-- I've had a few comments in the chat there that some of these should be multiple choice. We did discuss that, but I don't think technology quite allowed us to allow for a ranking and selecting more than one. So if you feel strongly about some of the ones you weren't able to select, maybe add that into the chat. Give us your top three. And again, Mark, I think you said it very well, that we're coming from slightly different backgrounds and contexts, and the audiences that we're trying to reach vary slightly. But I tell you what, there's a strong lead for a public repository of case studies. So that's a relief as it's something that we were hearing about the work that's going on there.

Mark: Yes, and you know, Hannah, case studies are so important. What's also important, as well, is the quality of the case study and how it gets across its information. And certainly groups like ours can contribute to helping set standards for case studies that make them that much more useful and not just a series of pretty pictures, but really providing information that can be useful to a wider range of people around the world.

Hannah: Yeah, absolutely. And I think being aware of the different ways in which case studies might be used and the sort of information. I think for me, one of the most powerful things about the case studies is that it shows what is possible, which I think can sometimes feel a little overwhelming when we're faced with some of the challenges that we have to consider, so moving forward to see how that example you gave us, Stephanie progresses. I think it's very exciting. Right, I think, if that’s concluded...

Mark: We're getting some great input in the chat as well, so this is-- when we get this all wrapped up and get it out to the participants, I think there will be a package of information here that will really blow people's socks off. It's really great.

Hannah: Absolutely. A lot of discussion about cost there as well, which I think is really interesting, that point that it's connected to so many of the other factors that we're thinking about. I think we're probably ready to wrap up that poll and move on to questions now. I can see there's a lot of discussion in the chat, but if people want to post some questions, if you want to pose it to a specific speaker, then feel free. Otherwise, I will pick on them for each question. I don't know whether it's worth addressing that question of cost. Is there is there anyone that wants to take that on? I don't know. Mark, do you want to--.

Mark: And while-- I was just going to say, Hannah, that while we're waiting for questions to come in, we could also do what was going to be our first poll.

Hannah: Oh, yes. I forgot about that.

Mark: It's a little bit more general, but it certainly could fill up while we're waiting for more of these questions to come in.

Hannah: Yes, absolutely. Yes. Rachel--

Mark: Rachel, can you--.

Rachel: I'll bring that across for you now. Yeah.

Hannah: I've forgotten we've missed out on a poll, so--.

Rachel: Back with the technology, I'm afraid. It's the Friday 13th gremlins. It's fine. So this--.

Mark: Friday 13th, 2020.

Hannah: This could be so much worse. So what's the biggest challenge? This is Mark. This is about really understanding what the challenges are that people are facing so that we can look at how the work of the Climate Heritage Network and others might be able to start to fill some of those gaps and support you in some of those challenges. So interesting, a strong need for understanding there, I think, yeah, the use of vocabulary, I think, is a big one. I've certainly noticed in my own work on this sort of thing that the use of terminology-- it's hard enough understanding it amongst ourselves, let alone with policymakers who are not necessarily familiar with built heritage.

Mark: Yeah, I agree. And I think, you know, Stephanie said it well that their group working in the communications area recognised that vocabulary is a fundamental. We have to first get it right amongst ourselves, amongst the group of people who are on this webinar today, and then as we go out to our target audiences, make sure that we stay consistent. And that's a problem. Vocabulary is a problem throughout heritage conservation world, I think. But once we get more technically oriented and start ascribing against climate action, it becomes even that much more important. So Stephanie said it. It's the first building block and certainly all the other climate metrics and understanding the design tools. This is actually a big order, and to move an entire industry, which is what we have to do. We have to go way beyond the heritage conservation professionals. We have to move an entire industry in the built environment, and to get them to move – and they're traditionally a very conservative lot – we've really got to get a lot of information across to them to get it working in a mainstream.

Hannah: Yeah, absolutely. I think one example that really spoke to me recently... So the U.K. government are consulting on energy efficiency in the private rental sector at the moment, and in that document, this phrase, I think it's either whole house or building approach, is used. And we use that, or at least I've heard it used amongst my colleagues in Historic England to describe how you think about the building performance triangle, how a building works for its occupants with the services, the fabric and within the environment in which it's set and taking that holistic view. The way in which it was being used in that government document was to imply that you would take the whole building, gut it and do all the works and retrofit in one go, which is really quite different to the way in which we'd intend that to be used, so I think we have to be very mindful of some of those challenges.

So I can't see many questions coming up, but lots of fantastic discussions. I don't know whether, Lori, do you want to come back in? You were our first speaker and pick up on any of the points that you've seen in the chat and raise by others.

Lori: Sure, this isn't about data, but I think this issue of cost is obviously very important, and I think some of the comments around the fact that decision making is generally made around first cost is so true and that as we start to see carbon pricing become more prevalent, I think that's really going to help tip the equation for us. But one of the challenges, though, is that carbon pricing and carbon policy is focused really around operational carbon. And so we're still not quantifying and capturing that benefit of building reuse, so we need to be developing these carbon policies with lifecycle carbon in mind and with the time value of carbon in mind, and that's, I think, a real opportunity for advocacy from the heritage sector.

Mark: Oh, that's so true Lori. It's so true, Lori, and I think in Canada, the current government, which has got a lot of weight behind environmental issues, their slogan is, 'There needs to be a price on pollution'. And so I think, Deborah Walton made that statement in the chat group here, and I think it's very important that we understand, when people are making decisions based on cost, that they've got the cost, not actually the dollar value when you go to the Home Depot to purchase some materials, but the cost of all of the aspects that it's costing governments, it's costing taxpayers around the world to look after what we're doing with climate.

Hannah: Yeah, absolutely. Stephanie, do you want to pick up on that?

Stephanie: I'm really deep in the chat. This is very great, but a question just came in and I might also call on Lori for help with this just based on her expertise. Carbon accountancy seems to be a strong term. Does it have any research behind it, and how do we grow a methodology and [view that?] widely shared in relation to what this might be? So Lori, do you have any insight on the term carbon accountancy. You had started touching on that.

Lori: Sure. Yes, and I guess the terminology that I'll use as an American is carbon accounting, which I expect is roughly the same thing. And carbon accounting in itself is a highly established field. It's been applied to other sectors and other industries in more depth than it has to the building sector, although that's starting to change. So because of that, there are a lot of international standards. I can't think of the ISO numbers right now, but there are international standards around lifecycle assessment.

I think where we start to lose the rigor and the consistency in methodology really starts with the tools and the data around specific building materials and our approach to how we use that data, how we apply it and where the data is coming from. So I don't know if that helps answer the question, really. But there are strong foundations in place. It's a quickly developing field that is sort of in the position of needing-- we need to start to use the tools and the metrics and the data in order to identify the gaps and fill them, and I think we're at a point where we can't wait for it to become a perfect system before we start to really utilise it.

Hannah: Yeah. Thanks, Lori. And Michael, you were talking about tools in your presentation that I think-- are there any points that you'd like to make about how that might contribute to that ability to account for carbon.

Michael: Yeah, I think-- I'm not too sure on that exactly, but one of the things I was thinking about as we were talking, I'm conscious that it's National Maintenance Week here in the UK, coming up I think next week and I know a lot of organisations within the SPAB and others are running webinars, and it's so important, a lot of times a homeowner might see a defect and think that something's lost or they need a new product to come in and replace, whereas just simple maintenance goes so far into giving new life to old buildings, and I don't think it had been mentioned here, but it's just such a crucial part of the conversation.

Hannah: Yeah, absolutely, and I know a lot of our colleagues in Historic England have been looking at the economic case for maintenance, as well, in terms of both the carbon and financially being a beneficial thing. I think that's absolutely right. It's often overlooked. I often think that we look for new technological solutions rather than actually looking at what we already know and we can already do, and looking after things well is a good way to not have to consume more.

Mark, do you want to make some final comments before I wrap up and give a plug to next week's webinar?

Mark: Yes, thank you very much, Hannah. I would mostly like to thank everyone who's participating. We have a good large group of people who are on the webinar today. About twice as many have registered, so we know that there will be people following up and checking in on this webinar later. And I would really especially like to thank our speakers. Under data, you heard Lori Ferriss, the director of sustainability and climate action for Goody Clancy Architects in Boston. You heard, under tools, Michael Netter, the professional services officer for the Institute of Historic Building Conservation. And under communications, you heard Stephanie [indistinct] senior historic preservation specialist, the city of San Antonio. And like I said, these folks have represented public, private and non-government agencies. But mostly what they're representing are the three groups of the Climate Heritage Network's Working Group 3. Probably the most I would like to thank is Historic England, who have partnered with Climate Heritage Network to put this whole series together, including today. And we've been working with a few of our colleagues there over the last few weeks to put this together, and let me tell you, they're professional and they've done a great job. And thank you very much.

Hannah: Oh, thank you, Mark, and I think it's an absolute pleasure to have been able to work the Climate Heritage Network on this and bringing these webinars together. So thank you again to all the speakers today. I think it was a fantastic job, even with the gremlins. And I just want to remind you that the webinar will be available shortly to view on our web page so you can catch up and share it with your friends. We will be circulating the links and the resources that were mentioned today, and we will try and add a few more that have been included in the chat so that the people have that. And next week – please tune in – next week, really exciting week, we will hear about valuing traditional knowledge in climate action. And I think there are close connections here with a lot of the traditional knowledge, certainly in the UK, around our traditional built heritage knowledge. But we will be hearing globally about all sorts of traditional knowledge that can be used to support climate action. So please do tune in next week. I'm going to hand back to [audio ends].