George Adams stressed the need for a new energy engineering conscience and called for the pace of action to improve the industry and reduce its environmental impact to be accelerated through increased efforts to embrace diversity and behavioural change. He said that encouraging young people to consider engineering as a career was essential, and that engineering in the built environment sector was about creating great buildings for people to work, play and live in.

However there remains the huge challenge of the energy and environmental impacts of existing building stock. Aligned to this, our societies continue to rapidly grow, consuming more and more technology and energy. Adams cited various examples from around the globe where big thinking engineering is being researched and implemented. He also acknowledged the need to work on new innovations and embrace technology such as BIM. CIBSE and partners have launched BIMTalk, a website to share knowledge across all areas of the industry from HVAC to landscaping.

Collaboration, integration and embracing diversity across our industry therefore was essential, Adams asserted, to grasp opportunities to achieve new energy behaviour, an important part of responding to climate change. CIBSE’s role going forward is to embrace a campaign for change, and continue to provide a thought leadership role, working with other professional bodies and government, to help enable this change to happen, whilst also calling for a new way of valuing energy efficiency investment.