Hello from Scotland.
Now, I know what you’re thinking – where’s the construction site,
where are the skyscrapers, what am I doing here?
Well, glass towers aren’t the only buildings using state-of-the art tech.
This iconic estate is being turned into a new kind
of energy hub – one that could shape the future of our cities.
The fight against climate change is one of the biggest challenges of our time,
and cities everywhere are coming under pressure to act fast.
And yet, many of these places have struggled to get going. They might have made plans,
but they’re yet to take real action.
That's not the case in Glasgow. This city is on a mission to become ‘climate resilient’
in under a decade and is seeing how technology can bring its buildings up to future standards.
One massive experiment is already underway – and in a part of the city where you’d least expect.
Glasgow is Scotland’s most populated city and a place steeped in history.
A former powerhouse of shipbuilding and trade, it was nicknamed Second City of
The British Empire for much of the 19th century, raising its reputation.
More recently, Glasgow found itself at the centre
of global attention once again – but for a very different reason.
“What happens in Glasgow over these two weeks will shape climate change policy”
In 2021 it hosted COP26, where hundreds of world leaders and
activists came together to tackle climate change.
But Glasgow’s commitment to the environment didn’t end there;
it’s also pledged to become net-zero carbon by 2030, and one of Europe’s most sustainable cities.
Net-zero is where greenhouse gas emissions have been dramatically
reduced, and any remaining emissions are offset.
“We believe that there's many solutions to get us to net-zero; there's no silver bullet.
The accounting of carbon when it comes to the value of existing structures is
something that we're developing and trying to understand better so that
we make that part of our process – always use our existing buildings,
especially oue listed and important heritage buildings first before we build something new.”
The city has already shown what it can do. The Athletes Village for the 2014
Commonwealth Games was turned into an energy-efficient housing development
with a low-carbon heating system – all on former industrial land.
Now it's embarking on another climate-friendly transition,
but this time in one of the city’s most beautiful and historic spots.
This is Pollok Country Park, and it’s one of the largest green spaces in the city.
As well as being a sanctuary for people and wildlife,
it’s also home to several notable buildings, and one pretty incredible renovation project.
At the centre of it all is Pollok House, a Georgian mansion dating from the 1700s.
It’s the ancestral home of the Maxwell family,
who were a pretty big deal around here for several centuries.
The Maxwells have owned land in the area since the 1200s,
and as we all remember in great detail their most famous member, Sir John Maxwell,
fought for Mary Queen of Scots at the Battle of Langside near here in 1568.
The house was gifted to the City of Glasgow in the 1960s and more
recently became known as Scotland’s Downton Abbey.
But it isn’t the largest attraction in the park – that title goes to the Burrell Collection.
It’s been labelled one of Europe’s most beautiful museums,
with thousands of artworks and artefacts from all over the world.
Next door is Knowehead Lodge, built over a century ago for staff at the estate – like
the gamekeeper or gardener – to live in. Today it’s used as an office for the park’s management.
On the banks of the river is the derelict Old Stable Courtyard, that's now being restored.
It features a gate from the Renaissance period and
a wall section that’s believed to be from a medieval castle.
£13 million of government funding is now being spent to turn it into a Living Heritage Centre.
“We're going to showcase renewable energy generation on the river,
and we're going to provide educational facilities for local people and schools to come and have
a base within the park and really make use of this venue and this attraction that we have.”
Apart from the museum, which has had a £68 million makeover unveiled by the king,
most of the buildings in Pollok Park haven’t changed much in a long time.
But now these treasures of the past are being equipped with cutting-edge new
tech as part of a plan to transform this whole site into a new kind of energy lab.
The idea is to make the site energy independent,
which means that all power is generated and used off-grid.
Now, doing that means reducing the carbon emissions of the buildings,
while investing in renewable energy.
But deciding how best to achieve that isn't simple.
In fact, it’s difficult to know where to start.
That's why a digital twin of the entire park has been created by IES,
a Glasgow-based tech company specialising in the decarbonisation of buildings and cities.
Digital twins are virtual replicas of a physical asset. This can be anything
from a single object to a group of buildings.
“It's based on physics-based simulations of the buildings and also uses metadata from the
site – so from sensors, from building management systems – and it collates the two together to
really create a digital asset which behaves every moment in time like the real building.”
In this digital twin, the main buildings have been recreated using the IES Virtual Environment,
giving precise information on how energy is used all over the park.
The models also show how consumption can be reduced and where improvements can be made.
“It was very interesting to work with different types of buildings,
different ages, different challenges – not only single buildings but also how
they could interact with each other, how they could deploy renewables on the park
to make sure they supply part of the energy demand from the park itself.”
Several possible scenarios were modelled in the digital twin to show the impact they would make.
“The scenario modelling was really important to understand,
based on what the potential future outcomes might be,
what the most cost-effective solution would be in terms of reducing the carbon footprint.”
We were able to test all the different options in terms of which buildings can
be connected to which generation sources and work out the best way forward.”
They included interconnecting all of the buildings’ heat and electricity networks
and installing 4MWh of battery storage and 3,000 square metres of solar panels.
That might sound like a lot, but all together these buildings do
require a fair bit of power – largely thanks to the Burrell Collection.
Over two thirds of the park’s energy is used by this building alone. It has a large floor area
and needs to run cooling and dehumidification systems for all of those museum pieces.
“It's already in quite a good place energy efficiency-wise, but because a lot of the
paintings and the artwork are very old, they have to be kept at very precise conditions
to do with temperature, humidity and things so it does actually have very high energy loads.”
A new hydroelectric turbine, fed by the river, is set to be installed at the
site of the old sawmill, which could end up powering Pollok House with renewable energy.
“The data we will get from the digital twin will allow us to
become better operators when it comes to managing energy.
It's not just about designing something,
it's about operating and optimising the energy you've got.
If we can use local energy, it gives us a lot more flexibility in
what we're looking to do in the performance of the building.”
Results showed that if all the upgrades were carried out,
it would lead to a 34% reduction in carbon emissions across the estate.
The software also enabled custom dashboards to be
set up – offering live data at a glance or in detail.
Now, as you might imagine with old places like this,
upgrading them to become energy efficient is not straightforward.
Pollok House and the courtyard buildings are all Grade A-listed,
so there’s a limit to what can be done.
They also require a lot of heating because … it’s Scotland.
It means a lot of the improvements you might do to a modern building to make it
more energy efficient, like wall insulation or double glazing, is out of the question.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t change where that energy is coming from,
and that alone can make a big difference.
The museum has already shown what’s possible. During the refurb,
vast amounts of solar panels and LED fittings were put in, cutting energy consumption by a quarter.
In a country where 80% of the buildings we’ll have in 2050 have already been built – many of
them already quite old – these sorts of projects need to start happening in a lot more places.
The hope is this popular site becomes an example of what can
be done as the city tries to hit that 2030 net-zero target.
“It's the first time we've used a digital twin outside of one big building. So,
trying to have that network of buildings and
think about energy flows and generation across a series of buildings – well,
that's what we'll need to do in the city. It is our intention to use this as a learning exercise.”
When you walk around old places like this you can’t help but think of the
past and what must have happened in and around these buildings centuries ago.
But now we’re in a climate emergency and as we look to the future we’re
going to have to use our built environment to get out of it.
Yes, a lot of it will come down to how we build new projects,
but we have to make sure our existing buildings – even iconic ones like this – are part of it too.
This video was made possible by IES. You can learn more about that at the link below.
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