Two-thirds of Edinburgh’s and nearly three-quarters of Glasgow’s homes are flats, and most of those buildings leak heat and burn fossil fuels. This £10 million Centre brings together five Scottish universities and 58 industry and public-sector partners to retrofit high-density urban housing at scale—tackling a problem that affects 6 million buildings across the UK and 55 percent of the global urban population. The challenge is that dense city blocks, especially pre-1919 stone tenements and World Heritage streetscapes, cannot be decarbonised with off-the-shelf solutions. Listed-building rules, mixed-use layouts, and the sheer number of flats make standard insulation and heating upgrades impractical or illegal. The Centre will co-develop and test new high-efficiency building fabrics, rapid-fit low-cost heating systems, and community-scale heating-cooling networks designed specifically for these complex streetscapes. If successful, the project could create over 2,000 regional green jobs, upskill 6,500 British Gas engineers, and deliver 600 manufacturing roles—while cutting energy costs for the key workers and low-income households who disproportionately live in high-density housing. The prototypes and living-lab evidence will also give UK manufacturers a tested product range to export to the many global cities facing the same retrofit bottleneck.
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High density building areas within cities and towns have the greatest challenges in meeting net zero targets and are ‘keystones’ of the future UK green economy. Diverse complexities of building archetypes, multi-use, historic and ‘listed status’ planning constraints requires a range of innovative low carbon green solutions. This is a critical net zero challenge not just for the UK (6M buildings) but also globally with 55% of the world's population living and working in urban areas, rising to 68% by 2050. This offers a significant major market opportunity for innovative co-designed UK-based manufactured solutions. The city regions of Edinburgh and Glasgow have the highest density proportion of flats in UK cities at 68% and 73% versus London 46% (UK average 19%). Over the next 20 years both cities combined will have a £35 Billion net zero retrofit requirement for existing buildings, including over 200,000 pre-1919 stone buildings and World Heritage streetscapes. They offer the unique potential of being the green economy UK pathfinders and primary pilot city regions for hosting a Centre for Net Zero High Density Buildings (CeNZ-HighDB). CeNZ-HighDB combines world leading expertise involving five regional universities (Edinburgh, Glasgow, Strathclyde, Napier and West of Scotland) with 58 partner organisations to design, develop and deliver inclusive net zero solutions for high density buildings and city-town streetscapes. This £10M Centre partners with UK construction industry, product manufacturers, energy companies, public bodies, housing organisations, communities and colleges to accelerate societal critical green economy pilot and prototype projects. Utilising a whole system co-designed led approach with industry and public sector the Centre will develop, test and underpin delivery of identified new ‘green’ innovations including high-energy efficiency building fabrics, new lower cost rapid-fit heating technologies, novel community heating-cooling systems for complex multi-use streetscapes and advancements in thermal-cooling modelling and data driven innovation to drive green economy growth. A major proportion of the UK’s key workers, low-income households and disadvantaged groups live in high density buildings and the Centre’s impacts will enable reduced energy costs, substantial carbon emission reductions and accelerate 'inclusive' retrofit delivery for social housing sectors and urban buildings. Importantly CeNZ-HighDB will partner with regional skills academies and colleges to accelerate future deployment of innovative product and technology solutions co-developed with industry partners. Our networks within colleges and industry will provide established pathways to roll out new training courses accelerating green economy growth and enhancing EDI outcomes pan-UK. Early mapping of 50+ partner co-developed projects constitutes a rapid Centre development pipeline that will: create over 2,000 new regional green jobs with award winning regional skills partners; support net zero transition by upskilling over 6,500 British Gas installation engineers and deliver over 600 manufacturing industry jobs. CeNZ-HighDB will engage with policy makers, technical standards bodies, building control, other HEI’s expertise and health and safety advisors to maximise reach of the centre’s whole-systems approach enabling wider impact and engagement addressing synergetic high-density buildings ‘grand challenges’ across the UK. CeNZ-HighDB brings together a critical mass of world leading expertise, innovative partner companies, major city and housing organisations to accelerate net zero green outcomes, economic growth and societal benefits firstly for the city regions and then more widely pan-UK. It will provide international export growth opportunities for UK companies through co-developed solutions underpinned by prototype/pilot ‘real-site’ and ‘living-lab’ based evidence.
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