Robert Price Sustainable Energy Centre
Government legislation and the increasing demand for environmental change has brought sustainability products firmly to the front of the Welsh housing agenda. In response to the public sector net-zero targets, Robert Price has developed a Sustainable Energy Centre, which I had the pleasure of visiting last week.
The Sustainable Energy Centre is an innovative and unique approach to pushing sustainable construction forward. The Centre comprises a dedicated showroom and an accredited training academy, created to inform customers on a wide range of sustainability products and renewable technologies within the construction sector. It has been designed for registered social landlords, contractors, and tenants alike as the team understands how education throughout the supply chain is important to reaching net-zero.
The Energy team has nurtured an environment where clients can collaborate and share successes and lessons learnt, allowing the industry to confidently step forward towards building a carbon neutral future.
The Centre hosts a variety of events designed to bring people from across the sector together. I specifically learnt about the technologies and training available to the sector and had the opportunity to chat with manufacturers about their innovative technologies.
The work of the team in the Centre was recently recognised at the 2022 CIH Welsh Housing Awards as the Centre was nominated in two categories ‘Excellence in Housing Innovation’ and ‘Sustainability in Housing’; and was Highly Commended in the Sustainability in Housing category.
The Sustainable Energy Centre was recognised and Highly Commended for:
- Engaged with a third-party training provider, delivering over 7000 hours of green skills training in the dedicated training academy so far.
- Collaborated with TPAS Cymru to host a NetZero Engagement Club, involving a “tour of a Net Zero technology centre, followed by a round table discussion with like-minded social housing staff who have an interest in net-zero. This is perfect for those who want to see and learn more about net-zero technology and its role in the new WHQS2 objectives.”
- The Centre has attracted visits from the likes of the Active Building Centre, Trustmark, and Optimised Retrofit skills programme, with the aim of collaboration to help the industry achieve net-zero in housing by 2030.
- The Energy team actively reaches out to social housing, offering everything from roadshows to in-house ‘innovation weeks’.
- The Energy team has reached out and engaged with over 30 social landlords and, so far, delivering over 1500 hours of product education awareness training.
They recently held a Net Zero Showcase attended by nearly 100 people from across the industry including social housing providers, contractors, and consultants. Joined by a number of our suppliers including Daikin, Zenova, and Sunamp, where they showcased a variety of the technologies and training available at the Robert Price Sustainable Energy Centre to decarbonise housing.
The Centre also has recently hosted an event to celebrate the Centre being a part of the Daikin Sustainable Home Network, stocking and supplying Daikin products as well as being a training hub for installers to encourage the installation of heat pumps into homes. The event was attended by the Mayor of Newport, Martyn Kellaway, and Councillor Yvonne Forsey.
They have also hosted a Zenova product demonstration event which included presentations on their innovative products and to finish off, the team performed their live demo to showcase the effectiveness of their thermally insulating paint.