Discussing upcoming webinar: Carbon Co-op on strategies for cutting down residential carbon emissions.
On Wednesday, 30 October, between 1-2:30pm, a webinar organized by a not-for-profit organization will delve into the importance of retrofitting UK homes and the challenges households face in accessing this crucial service. The event will be chaired by Jennifer Brennan, Co-founder and Director of Harlow Consulting, and will feature a panel of specialists, including architects Hannah Dixon and Julie Maxwell from Progress in Practice, Michael Dickinson from B4Box Ltd, Jonathan Atkinson, Co-founder of Carbon Co-op, and Aneaka Kelly, Citizen and Community Engagement Lead at Carbon Co-op.
The webinar will focus on the Carbon Co-op's Levenshulme Area-Based Retrofit scheme, a community-led initiative aimed at improving energy efficiency and decarbonisation of homes in Levenshulme, Manchester. This scheme seeks to overcome common barriers to retrofitting UK homes such as high costs, structural disruption, lack of resident trust, and complexity in accessing effective funding and technologies.
The Carbon Co-op's scheme adopts an area-based approach, targeting groups of homes within a defined neighbourhood to enable scalable, coordinated retrofit efforts. This approach supports strategic planning, standardisation of solutions, and community engagement, which reduces costs and accelerates delivery.
The scheme also involves the community directly, leveraging local trust and knowledge to ensure retrofit measures match residents' needs, thus increasing public consent and confidence in retrofit technologies. The initiative utilises technology-agnostic and whole-house retrofit methods, offering tailored solutions based on individual homes' survey data to optimise cost-effectiveness and performance in diverse property types.
Moreover, the Carbon Co-op's scheme works with funding frameworks flexibly, aiming to improve access to grants and subsidies such as ECO4 and the Boiler Upgrade Scheme to reduce financial barriers. The initiative also promotes innovation and demonstrates new technologies, for example through pilot projects and test houses that showcase real retrofit benefits and help build trust and awareness.
The webinar aligns with government targets to upgrade as many homes as possible to EPC Band C by 2035 and ensure that all fuel-poor homes are at least band C by 2030. It is an important opportunity for anyone working in the built environment to learn from the Levenshulme pilot and gain insights from the panel of specialists offering their insights from the innovative Levenshulme project.
Tickets for the webinar can be found here. For more information about the Carbon Co-op and their initiatives, visit their website at carbon.coop.
[1] Carbon Co-op. (2021). Levenshulme Area-Based Retrofit Scheme. Retrieved from carbon.coop/levenshulme
[2] Carbon Co-op. (2021). Retrofit Strategy and Business Model. Retrieved from carbon.coop/retrofit-strategy-business-model
[3] Carbon Co-op. (2021). Retrofit Projects. Retrieved from carbon.coop/retrofit-projects
[4] Carbon Co-op. (2021). Retrofit Technologies. Retrieved from carbon.coop/retrofit-technologies
- The webinar, focusing on the Carbon Co-op's Levenshulme Area-Based Retrofit scheme, will discuss the role of environmental-science and technology in addressing climate-change by retrofitting UK homes.
- The Carbon Co-op's initiative, targeting neighbourhoods, aims to update community homes' energy efficiency, thereby contributing to the science of environmental conservation and the government's targets on reducing carbon emissions.
- Following the webinar, attendees working in the built environment can explore how the scheme, integrating technology-agnostic solutions, ensures residents in a community benefit from improved home efficiency while fostering trust in climate-change solutions.
