The Sustainable Building Envelope Centre (SBEC) is a collaboration between the Welsh Assembly Government, the Low Carbon Research Institute (LCRI) and Tata Steel.
Based at Tata Steel’s site at Shotton, Deeside, it will be a showcase for sustainable products and used to test and monitor new integrated heating, energy and ventilation systems on the fabric of the building. Researchers and technologists will create building façades that will transform the buildings from being energy consumers into energy generators.
SBEC was designed by the Welsh School of Architecture (WSA) in partnership with Tata Steel and already incorporates several prototype renewable energy systems that will be tested and monitored as part of the initial work programmes.
Tata Steel’s involvement in the £6.5m SBEC project is just the latest in a number of investments in technology with the aim of improving the sustainability both of the steel industry and the industries it services.
In addition, Tata Steel and Dyesol recently announced that they had decided to expand their £11m joint photovoltaics development project based at the PV Accelerator Centre at the Tata Steel site at Shotton.
Meanwhile the £20m SPECIFIC project at Baglan in South Wales has been set up to study other new coatings for steel and other substrates that can generate power.
Uday Chaturvedi, chief technical officer of Tata Steel in Europe, said: “Buildings are responsible for almost half of the UK’s carbon emissions, half of its water consumption, around a third of its landfill waste and a quarter of all raw materials used in the economy. This means that the UK’s sustainable development targets cannot be met without a fundamental change to the way in which buildings are constructed. The steel industry can be part of the solution and these projects demonstrate our commitment to helping to develop a sustainable future.”
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