This initiative has been the result of a collaboration between a number of Scottish Local Authorities (City of Edinburgh Council, Fife Council, Perth and Kinross Council, Midlothian Moray, Renfrewshire, and East Ayrshire Council primarily) who have undertaken analysis of building retrofit options utilising the same methodology and professional team.
This and a further estate-wide piece of analysis from an additional Scottish Local Authority (Angus Council) by the same consultancy team gave rise to a significant data set analysing the costs and benefits of different levels of building retrofit and primary heat plant decarbonisation.
The consistent nature and scale of the resulting data set was initially going to be simply shared across the participants, however it was identified that, with further analysis, there was an opportunity to unlock greater insight from this significant investment which could be of use to a wider audience in responding to the climate emergency.
The critical additional funding to undertake the required analytical work was provided by HubEast Central, Passivhaus Trust and The City of Edinburgh Council LHEES initiative. This has resulted in the development of an open-source toolkit which is available to any similar organisation faced with assessing the impact of decarbonising their estate portfolio.
In addition to the bodies providing funding, there was support from Scottish Heads of Property Services (SHoPS) and the Improving Construction across Local Authorities initiative (ICaLA), an initiative lead by Scottish Futures Trust and attended by a core group of Scottish Local Authority representatives.
Other valuable consultees included the Education Net Zero and Hub teams from Scottish Futures Trust, the Centre for Net Zero High Density Buildings, SPEN, and National LHEES Leads for Scotland. The Tool has been beta tested by many of the Local Authorities mentioned above, along with Glasgow City Council and South Lanarkshire.
While the data set is primarily relevant to Scottish Local Authority Operational Estates, there is also a recognised element of transferability for estates and asset management teams in other sectors and geographies applying the toolkit with a level of contextual adaptation.
For clarity this toolkit, which has benefited from significant investment, is being provided free to users as an open-source document. There is future potential to further refine this approach should it gain traction.
Patrick Brown
Head of Sustainable Construction Delivery,
City of Edinburgh Council
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Disclaimer
This toolkit provides indicative outputs based on user inputs and benchmark data. It is intended to support—not replace—professional judgment. Users are responsible for ensuring assumptions are appropriate to their context. No liability is accepted for decisions made based on these estimates. Commercialisation is strictly prohibited. All rights reserved.
The Tool should be used in coordination with the accompanying Handbook.
Estate Retrofit Toolkit
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