Being held at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester, the 2026 conference will explore how fabric performance and energy systems interact to shape truly sustainable buildings.
This year’s event will feature a mix of lectures, panel discussions and breakout workshops. With a focus on creating buildings that prioritise environmental responsibility without compromising good design, occupant comfort, or health, the programme will bring together a diverse range of practitioners sharing their knowledge, case studies, and practical experience.
Attendees can expect plenty of opportunities for discussion, questions, and lively debate as we collectively examine what it really means to deliver fabric-first, energy-conscious construction.
Fabric and energy: the long view
This talk will look at the history of how humans have sought healthy living conditions through balancing fabric adaptations with energy inputs, in both hot and cold contexts. The human past offers huge encouragement and inspiration as we try to reduce the impacts on the environment of our buildings and their energy use. It will propose a powerful, cheap, simple tool for radically reducing the harms produced by our buildings.
Barnabas Calder is a historian of architecture and energy, and head of the History of Architecture Research Cluster at the University of Liverpool. He is author of Architecture: From Prehistory to Climate Emergency (Pelican, 2021) and with Florian Urban co-author of Form Follows Fuel: Fourteen Buildings from Antiquity to the Oil Age (Routledge, 2026).
Closing the Loop: How Reused Steel Can Drive Low-Carbon Design
As the industry seeks to reduce the whole-life carbon impact of buildings, attention is increasingly focused on the relationship between building fabric, operational energy demand and embodied carbon. While much of the discussion around net zero centres on building envelopes and energy systems, the structural frame remains a significant contributor to up-front carbon. This presentation explores how steel reuse can dramatically reduce the carbon impact of building fabric, offering up to a 97% reduction in cradle-to-gate embodied carbon compared with conventional new steel sections. Joe & Beth will discuss how reuse fits within a circular economy approach and the role structural engineers can play in driving wider adoption across the industry.
Beth CEng MICE – Associate and Certified PassivHaus Designer at Momentum Structural Engineers.
Structural Engineers. Beth is a Chartered Civil Engineer and Certified PassivHaus Designer with a specialism in low-carbon, high-performance building design. With a multi-disciplinary background in both structural engineering and architecture, she focusses in delivering energy-efficient, sustainable structures that prioritise comfort and climate resilience. Outside of project work, she is an AECB Expert Advisor and visiting tutor at UWE and Sheffield Schools of Architecture.
Joe Garbett MEng CEng MICE MIStructE – Associate Director at Momentum Structural Engineers.
Joe is a Chartered Civil and Chartered Structural Engineer with a focus on reuse, natural materials and sustainable design. Taking a creative approach, he works across a wide range of sectors and scales, supporting clients to identify opportunities for innovation in materials, masterplanning and infrastructure.
He regularly delivers technical talks on sustainable materials and approaches, presenting to audiences including the Institution of Structural Engineers, Timber Development UK, Earth Building UK and a number of universities.
No Retrofit, No Heat Pumps; Why Retrofit and Heat Pumps Must Go Hand-in-Hand
The talk will explore the concept of peak heat and the risk this poses to heat pump role out in the UK. It will discuss potential solutions, including how fabric retrofits may be essential to unlocking large scale adoption of net zero heat in homes.
Heat Pumps in the UK: Problems and Possibilities.
At the moment, heat pumps are often seen as a luxury good aimed at wealthier, environmentally-conscious households The presentation will examine the benefits to be derived from rolling out the technology on a far wider scale. And the obstacles that are inhibiting that roll-out.
Evan Davis is the presenter of the BBC Radio 4 daily news show, PM. He has held a number of senior presenting jobs at the BBC, including BBC2’s Newsnight programme, and the Radio 4 Today programme. He is also known as the presenter of a popular business reality show, Dragons’ Den and hosts the Radio 4 business podcast, The Bottom Line.
Prior to these roles, Evan was the Economics Editor at BBC News, the most senior economics role at the corporation. In 2025 he co-hosted a podcast series, The Happy Heat Pump podcast and in 2026 he presented a Radio 4 series on heat pumps. Evan studied at Oxford and Harvard, and has written several books; the latest of which is Post Truth: Why we have reached peak bullshit, and what we can do about it.
People First Retrofit
Arguments about whether retrofit should be ‘fabric first’ or ‘heat pump and energy systems first’ are getting tiresome. PPR take a different approach – focusing on people, context, and understanding first. We’ll explore through case studies and discussion what this means in a range of homes – and the implications of this for policy makers and practitioners.
Marianne is People Powered Retrofit’s co-founder and Technical Director. As a qualified architect, Marianne brings almost two decades of retrofit expertise. This includes retrofit at scale in social housing, community-led projects, and work on individual homes. Much of this was at URBED and in collaboration with Carbon Coop, prior to PPR being established as an independent organisation in 2021. She contributes to national retrofit standards, policy, and strategy. She has worked on PPR’s Home Retrofit Planner tool since its inception, using it to test and develop retrofit strategies. In collaboration with our partners and in our consultancy she continues to work to develop new tools and insights to support more and better retrofit.
Helen works across People Powered Retrofit and Carbon Co-op, leading Research and Evaluation projects. She works across teams offering specialist sectoral expertise and knowledge, as well as delivering workshops and training in a variety of settings. Helen has worked in energy and retrofit for many years, with a particular interest in handover and evaluation stages. Previously at co-operative consultancy URBED, she collaborated with Carbon Co-op on many occasions, including the pilot phase for People Powered Retrofit. She’s also worked at the Centre for Sustainable Energy. Helen has a keen interest in how technical information is communicated to and understood by ʻnon-technicalʼ users, and the impact this has on the operational performance of buildings and systems.
Lessons from The Good Building Book: What Works, What Doesn’t, and Why
The Good Building Book is Jon and Nick’s attempt to answer the question, why do so many buildings perform so badly and what can we do to improve them? In this workshop they will use some real world examples of highly praised but poorly functioning buildings to explore why affordability, good performance and beauty are often seen as mutually exclusive goals. They think they have some practical tools to share but look forward to their ideas being challenged and hopefully refined by robust debate.
Nick Grant is a freelance energy consultant and principal of Elemental Solutions. His interest in closing the performance gap between design and reality led him to the Passivhaus Standard of which he is one of the UK pioneers. He is an active contributor to discussions on sustainable design but is also a practical engineer and self builder. Nick was a long time Trustee of the AECB and is Technical Director of the Passivhaus Trust.
Jon Broome trained as an architect now designer, enabler and self-builder of two houses. He was a Director of Architype, an architectural practice working on housing, education, health and community buildings with specialist expertise in low energy design, timber-frame construction, community engagement and sustainable building. He is author of The Green Self-Build Book and contributor to Housing & the Environment and Architecture and Participation. He lives in London, where he runs his own consultancy.
Practical tools for Collaborative Conversations
A practical and evidence-based workshop exploring the core principles of collaborative conversations, this session will equip participants with a tool-kit for communicating with empathy and assertiveness. Through interactive exercises and real-world scenarios, attendees will learn about practical techniques to handle challenging workplace interactions with confidence and clarity. We cover:
• The 5 common approaches to collaborative conversations
• Identifying positions vs underlying needs
• Managing mindset and emotions under pressure
• Building empathy and active listening skills
• Models of assertive and respectful communication
Sarah is a Business Psychologist, Executive Coach & Breathwork Practitioner. She uses evidence-based psychology to help people and teams develop practical tool kits for enhanced workplace collaboration, resilience and well-being. Her work is rooted in a mission to create more balanced, compassionate workplaces where people feel grounded, supported, and able to perform at their best.
Beyond Carbon: Towards Place-Based Performance
Climate change is reshaping the conditions under which our buildings and places must perform. Industry standards and policy rightly prioritise operational and embodied carbon reduction, yet carbon is only one dimension of a much broader challenge.
Our built environment must perform under increasingly extreme and unpredictable conditions, with more frequent heatwaves, intense rainfall and flooding. We also need our buildings and places to be healthy, efficient, adaptable, and productive over the long term. Carbon reduction is a necessary condition, but it is not sufficient to create places that thrive in a changing climate.
What does it mean in practical terms to move beyond carbon as the sole metric of success
This workshop invites participants to shift from a building-by-building optimisation mindset to a place-based perspective. Where are the synergies and trade-offs between low-energy design, climate adaptation, biodiversity and health outcomes? How might design decisions that optimise one performance criterion undermine another?
By considering buildings as part of wider place-based system, we will explore how low-energy design and retrofit can support not only emissions reduction, but also climate resilience, indoor environmental quality, long-term adaptability, and healthier communities.
Rather than offering a single new metric, this session will explore systems thinking approaches that help designers navigate uncertainty and create places that remain healthy, efficient, adaptable and productive in a changing climate.
PHPP, PHribbon and CarbonLite Certification
In this session participants will have the chance to ask any question about PHPP, PHribbon or CarbonLite certification. For example, in PHPP how are components brought in from the PHI and other websites? In PHribbon for Whole Life Carbon, why is it useful to arrange materials by RICS category? In CarbonLite certification what is FRsi and why is there a limit on it?
Tim is the Standards and Certification Programme Manager, runs the PHPP and PHribbon courses and supports the PHribbon software. Tim worked for 10 years as a Certified Passivhaus Designer, 8 as a Charted Architectural Technologist, a Retrofit Coordinator for ~100 projects in London, is an Expert Advisor for the AECB Retrofit course and has worked extensively with PHPPs for new build and retrofit projects, mostly dwellings.
The AECB would like to thank all of our sponsors for their valuable support. Their contribution plays an important role in enabling us to deliver high‑quality events that support skills, knowledge‑sharing and collaboration across the sustainable built environment sector.
If you are interested in sponsoring this event and aligning your organisation with evidence‑based, low‑carbon building practice, we would be delighted to hear from you. Please email us to discuss sponsorship opportunities.
Members only Early Bird tickets on sale from 29th April until 29th May.
General sale tickets from 29th May – 23rd September.
Tickets can be purchased here
Substitutions can be made up to 3 days before the event, at no additional cost, but please email [email protected] of any change in name. If you find it necessary to cancel your booking and are unable to find a substitute please notify us immediately in writing. Provided written notice is received the following cancellation terms will apply:
The museum address is:
Science and Industry Museum
Liverpool Road
Manchester
M3 4FP.
It is located in Castlefield, not far from the Deansgate-Castlefield Metrolink stop.
The museum does not have parking facilities on site and recommends visitors to use public transport where possible as local authority car parks are also limited.
More information on travelling to the museum can be found here
Phone:
0845 4569773 / 01559 370908
Email: [email protected]
Address:
PO Box 32, Llandysul
SA44 5ZA
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