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Santander has joined forces with Xynteo and other leading businesses across the built environment to deliver the UK’s first zero-carbon and holistically sustainable buildings.
10 December 2024.
Xynteo, a purpose-led advisory firm with 20 years of experience in forming impactful partnerships, has launched the Build Ahead UK coalition, a business-led alliance bringing together key majors – Santander UK, PLP Architecture, and the Accelerating Concrete Decarbonisation Group supported by Derwent Plc.
Build Ahead UK is a partnership of progressive companies that seek to develop the UK’s first truly zero carbon buildings – and shape the market for the next 10,000. The coalition’s focus is on creating tangible outcomes by bringing together the pockets of excellence across the value chain to demonstrate the art of the possible in the UK. This requires sourcing, testing, and scaling zero carbon materials, data-driven design with a view to longer-term sustainability, testing and implementing new technologies, and prioritising holistic sustainability beyond carbon.
We are proud and excited to be founding members of Build Ahead UK. At Santander, we trust in the power of collaboration to support a secure and inclusive transition to a more sustainable economy. We want to help our clients and partners to access the network, information, and tools they need to enable sustainable growth. Through Build Ahead UK, we believe we can apply a “test and learn” model, taking action to push for system-wide decarbonisation and to consider demand and finance as a key enabler.
We understand the important role we have as a bank to support the financing of the green transition. The Build Ahead UK coalition will allow us to contribute to discussions that will drive sustainable growth, enhance asset value, and help position the UK at the forefront of the transition to a low carbon economy. Together we can build a resilient future that will benefit our customers and the communities around us.
We are proud to launch Build Ahead UK to create the momentum that the industry needs to deliver sustainable and commercially viable buildings. We already see significant demand from our global partners for sustainable and low-carbon solutions across all sectors and that’s why we’ve set the lofty ambition of creating the UK’s first end-to-end, holistically sustainable buildings. To get there, we need to undertake several different market enabling projects as well as demonstration projects. We want to inspire the market and the government to create a movement. With the power of the collective, we can accelerate the change we need.
The coalition has four key objectives:
- Source, facilitate, and enable testing and uptake of innovative materials and technology to reduce embodied and operational carbon in tandem.
- Engage with senior leaders from local and national government as a forward-leaning unique partnership to inform key regulation and policies on embodied carbon, retrofit vs. redevelopment, and others.
- Bring together pockets of excellence across the value chain from emerging clean-materials to future-focused design and development.
- Showcase the art of the possible by delivering multiple pilot projects, culminating in a flagship project in London, and create commercial opportunity for partners.
To commemorate the launch, Xynteo and partners hosted leaders from across the ecosystem, including developers, architects, financial institutions, engineering firms, construction contractors, non-profits, and government representatives at the White Chapel Building in London.
In the UK, buildings are the second largest source of emissions1, with 49% of the UK’s emissions arising from the built environment2. The IEA estimates that we will fall short of our 2050 net zero target by 60% in the current business-as-usual scenario3. Now, with the new Labour government’s plans on building decarbonisation, growing need for decarbonised heating, and changing occupier preferences, it is vital to invest in sustainability from a whole life carbon perspective. Adopting innovation in new builds and redevelopment across the country will go a long way in supporting a sustainable built environment.
1. “Decarbonising the built environment Government policy scorecard”, UKGBC, 2022
2. The Whole Life Carbon Roadmap”, UKGBC, 2022
3. World Energy Outlook 2021, IEA, 2021
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