The built environment accounts for almost a quarter of the UK’s carbon emissions with embodied carbon from the construction and refurbishment of buildings currently making up 20% of these emissions.

The use of sustainably and locally sourced biobased resources such as wool, hemp and wood as a replacement for concrete, gypsum and fossil derived products provides a key opportunity for the industry to reduce its emissions whilst creating new market and employment opportunities.

In addition, biotechnology offers several promising avenues for developing bio-based construction materials, leveraging the unique properties and capabilities of biological systems. These construction materials offer the opportunity to lock up carbon captured from the atmosphere for relatively long periods of time.

Purpose: Join us for this exciting workshop, where we will discuss the exciting emerging field of bio-based construction materials, and what is needed to accelerate the sector, including, infrastructure, investment, funding for R&D, skills, policy, regulation and consumer and customer acceptance.

Agenda:

09:45 Coffee and registration

10:00 Welcome

10:05 The environmental and economic potential of circular bio-based construction materials – Dr Mark Corbett Biorenewables Development Centre

10:30 Biotechnology for living Construction – Professor Meng Zhang and Professor Martyn Dade-Robinson, Northumbria University

10:50 Retrofitting for a sustainable bio-based future – Alex Sparrow, Managing Director, UK Hempcrete

11:10 Building capability to process and create a range of technical bio-based & circular products – Sam Baumber, Co-founder & Chief Operating Officer, IndiNature

11:30 Fire side chat: Regulation of novel bio-based construction materials – Alex Sparrow, Managing Director, UK Hempcrete; Sam Baumber, Co-founder & Chief Operating Officer, IndiNature; Dr Mike Lawrence, Director of Research, Natural Building Systems and Visiting Professor at University of Suffolk

12:00 Challenges and Opportunities for bio-based materials in the construction sector -Mark Lynn, Chair, The Alliance for Sustainable Building Products (ASBP)

12:30 Lunch

13:15 Workshop: Challenges and Opportunities for Bio-based construction materials – what can we achieve in the next 24 months?

14:45 Summary of the day and next steps

15:00 Close

Please RSVP below to reserve your free place.