Triangle

 

We are delighted to extend a warm welcome to all participants of the International Conference of Net Zero Carbon Built Environment (ZCBE) in 2024.

The ZCBE 2024 will be held on 3-5th July 2024 in the city of Nottingham, UK. The three-day event is jointly organised by the University of Nottingham, University of Adelaide, Technical University of Crete, and Pennsylvania State University supported by Renewable Energy and Solar Energy Advances.

Quick links

 

The urgency to address climate change and achieve global sustainability goals has never been greater. The built environment plays a crucial role, as buildings and construction sectors combined are responsible for 40% of global energy use and 37% of global CO2 emissions.

Buildings constructed prior to the establishment of energy performance standards are often energy-inefficient or using inadequate heating and cooling systems. As a result, they require a substantial amount of energy for heating, cooling, and lighting, leading to high energy bills for occupants and significant CO2 emissions. To combat this, many countries have targeted to achieve the carbon neutrality goal by 2050 thus necessitating all new buildings from 2020 to be Nearly Zero-Energy Buildings (NZEB), with further policy driving buildings to be net energy generators, i.e. they should generate more energy than they use.

NZEBs aim to significantly reduce energy demand and meet remaining energy needs from renewable sources. The principle behind NZEBs is not just about reducing energy consumption to achieve comfortable and healthy buildings, but also about producing sustainable energy on-site or nearby, leading to a balance of the energy consumed and the energy produced on an annual basis. Achieving NZEBs can lead to a net-zero carbon built environment not only at the building level but also at the community, precinct, city and regional levels. 

With a primary focus on the net zero carbon built environment, the ZCBE 2024 aims to provide a platform for knowledge exchange for internationally leading researchers, industrial experts and policy makers to share recent advances, experience and expertise in the area of net zero carbon built environment and its associated studies. Together, we can fuel the advancement towards a carbon-neutral and greener future.

Logo ZCBE 2.0
 

 

The ZCBE 2024 will include keynote and invited speeches, plenary sessions, oral presentations, and poster sessions on the below topics, but is not limited to: 

  • Advances in renewable energy technology
  • Energy storage and integration in the built environment
  • Low carbon communities
  • Health and wellbeing in the built environment
  • Innovative building design, materials and construction
  • Net zero carbon building and environmental assessment and certification
  • Decarbonisation of the building stock 

We are pleased to announce outstanding papers will be considered for full publication in two special issues for Renewable Energy and Solar Energy Advances.

For detailed and updated information on the conference please email the Organising Chairs.

We look forward to welcoming you to Nottingham.   

 

Keynote speakers 

 

Prof Brian Norton
Professor Brian Norton
Head of Energy Research, Tyndall National Institute

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Professor Brian Norton PhD DSc DUniv(h.c.)  FIAE MRIA is former Head of Energy Research at Tyndall National Institute, former Research Professor at University College Cork and Professor of Solar Energy Applications at TU Dublin.

He is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, Ireland’s highest academic distinction, and a Fellow of the Irish Academy of Engineering. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Building Services Engineers. He is currently a Principal Investigator in MaREI, the Irish national research centre for Energy, Climate and Marine and leads its Energy Efficiency research area. He is an Honorary Professor at Universities in Northern Ireland, China and USA. He is currently Vice-President and Treasurer of the European Sustainable Energy Innovation Alliance and serves on the Steering Committee of the Daylight Academy.

As Secretary for Policy and International of the Royal Irish Academy, he serves on the European Academies Science Advisory Committee (EUSAC) and the EASAC Energy Panel. As immediate past-President of Dublin Institute of Technology, he played a major role in the creation of Technological University Dublin and in the realisation of its flagship Dublin city-centre campus at Grange Gorman.

Professor Philip Eames
Professor Philip Eames
Energy Leader, Loughborough University

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Professor Philip Eames is the Lead for Loughborough’s Global Energy Challenge, Director of Centre for Renewable Energy Systems Technology and holds the Chair in Renewable Energy at Loughborough University. He has over 28 years developed an internationally recognised track record for undertaking high quality research in the field of advanced low heat loss glazing, concentrating solar energy systems, energy saving and solar energy harnessing building fabric components, thermal energy storage systems and life cycle analysis. With over 200 publications his current H-index is 35. As PI or Co PI Professor Eames has been awarded over 40 grants and contracts to support his research activities. He regularly serves on conference technical committees and undertakes reviews of papers for conferences and journals. Peer review of research proposals for funding bodies in the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Holland and Israel have been performed with PhD students examined in the UK, Spain, Sweden and Australia.
 

 

Prof Soteris Kalogirou
Professor Soteris Kalogirou
Editor in Chief Renewable Energy

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Professor Soteris Kalogirou is at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Sciences and Engineering of the Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol, Cyprus. He is currently the Vice Rector on Economics, Personnel and Development of the university. In addition to his Ph.D., he holds the title of D.Sc. He is a Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences and Founding Member of the Cyprus Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts.

For more than 35 years, he is actively involved in research in the area of solar energy and particularly in flat plate and concentrating collectors, solar water heating, solar steam generating systems, desalination, photovoltaics, geothermal energy and absorption cooling.

He has a large number of publications in books, book chapters, international scientific journals and refereed conference proceedings. He is Editor-in-Chief of Renewable Energy and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Energy, and Editorial Board Member of another twenty journals. He is the editor of the book Artificial Intelligence in Energy and Renewable Energy Systems, published by Nova Science Inc., co-editor of the book Soft Computing in Green and Renewable Energy Systems, published by Springer, editor of the book McEvoy’s Handbook of Photovoltaics, published by Academic Press of Elsevier and author of the books Solar Energy Engineering: Processes and Systems, and Thermal Solar Desalination: Methods and Systems, published by Academic Press of Elsevier.

He is a member of World Renewable Energy Network (WREN), American Society of Heating Refrigeration and Air-conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), Institute of Refrigeration (IoR) and International Solar Energy Society (ISES).

Prof. Vajen Klaus
Professor Vajen Klaus
President of ISES, University of Kassel

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Prof. Dr. Klaus Vajen is President of ISES since 2020. He is Director of the Institute of Thermal Engineering at the University of Kassel, Germany, where he holds the Chair of Solar- and Systems Engineering, and he is furthermore a Distinguished Professor of the Technical University of Kyrgyzstan in Bishkek. He holds a Ph.D. in applied physics and is (co-)author of 300+ publications about (solar) thermal engineering, university education, and energy policy.

He is founder and director of the MSc-programme “Renewable Energies and Energy Efficiency” at the University of Kassel, as well as founder and head of the council “University Educations on Renewable Energies” with 120+ professors from German speaking countries. He developed and coordinates the Europe-wide PhD-education on solar thermal technology, together with Professor U. Jordan.

Klaus was member of the ISES Board of Directors from 2003-2011 and is a member again since 2018. He was Vice-president of ISES 2006-2007, founder of Young ISES (together with J. McIntosh) and Chair of the Solar World Congress 2011 in Kassel.

 
Tapas Mallick
Professor Tapas Mallick
Chair in Clean Technologies University of Exeter, UK

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Professor Tapas Mallick is a Chair in Clean Technologies, Renewable Energy and Lead of Solar Energy Research Group within the Environment & Sustainability Institute. He is also Director and Scientific Advisor of the BuildSolar Limited.  He is also Visiting Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India. His research focus is applied solar energy, he looks at bridging the urban and rural energy divide through solar energy implementation. He is particularly interested in teaching advanced solar energy engineering and heat transfer for renewable energy systems. He actively involves various RCUK, European and Industrial funded research projects in the area of Solar Energy. Professor Mallick is part of SUPERGEN solar consortium, EUED centre - key research consortium in the UK. In addition, Professor Mallick is Associate Editor and Subject Editor of the Journals Energies and IET Renewable Power Generation.He has strong relationship with many ODA countries spans across Indian continent, Middle East, and sub-saharan African continent. He has supervised twenty-two PhDs to completion and engaged several governmental level panel across the world. In 2016 Professor Mallick received British Indian Award for services to Education in the UK and in 2018 BuildSolar received Best Innovation for Sustainability award in Cornwall. 
Prof Md. K. Nazzeeruddin
Professor Md. K. Nazeeruddin
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL, Switzerland.

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Nazeeruddin is a Professor of Chemistry at the EPFL Sion campus, and his current research at EPFL focuses on Perovskite Solar Cells and Light-emitting diodes. He has published more than 820 peer-reviewed papers, ten book chapters, and he is the inventor/co-inventor of over 90 patents. His work's high impact has been recognized by invitations to speak at over 450 international conferences. He appeared in the ISI listing of most cited chemists and has more than 163'647 citations with an h-index of 180 (https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=j4rH8MkAAAAJ). He teaches the "Functional Materials" course at EPFL and Korea University. According to the Web of Science in 2016, he is the 5th most cited chemist in the world and is one of the 19 scientists identified by Thomson Reuters as the World's Most Influential Scientific Minds in 2015. He has been named Thomson Reuter's "Highly Cited Researcher" from 2014 to 2023 and was listed among the Top 10 researchers in the perovskite solar cell research field by the Times Higher Education. He directs and manages several industrial, national, and European Union projects. He has been appointed as World Class University professor by Korea University 2009 to 2014. He has been elected to the European Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of The Royal Society of Chemistry, and a Fellow of the Telangana Academy of Sciences. He has won the 34th Khwarizmi International Award (KIA) Laureate in Fundamental Sciences, 2021. 

 
Aoife Wiberg
Professor Aoife Houlihan Wiberg
Professor at The University of Bath

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Aoife Houlihan Wiberg recently joined The Department of Architecture and Engineering at The University of Bath in early 2023 having previously held the position of Professor of Architecture, Chair of Research in Architecture at the Belfast School of Architecture and the Built Environment at Ulster University, Belfast, UK since 2019. She returned to the UK after working for 10 years at The Research Centre for Zero Emission Buildings (ZEB http://zeb.no/index.php/en/) and The Research Centre for Zero Emission Neighbourhoods in Smart Cities at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. She is a Chartered member of The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) graduated as an architect from Cardiff University, and completed her M.Phil. and PhD Degree in Architecture from the University of Cambridge. She is UK National Expert in the International Energy Agency (IEA EBC) Annex 89 - Ways to Implement Net-zero Whole Life Carbon Buildings (2023-28). Prior to this, she was leading research in Annex 72 – Assessing Life Cycle Related Environmental Impacts Caused by Buildings (2017-2023) and Annex 57 – Evaluation of Embodied Energy and CO2eq Emissions for building construction (2012-2015).

 

 

 

Abstract submission 

We are now welcoming abstract submissions for the ZCBE 2024. You are encouraged, but not limited, to submit abstracts of papers on the main conference themes. For abstract submission you are asked to write:

  • Objectives of your paper (up to 100 words)
  • Methods and key outcomes (up to 100 words)
  • Novelty (up to 50 words)​

Abstracts will be evaluated based on significance of the work in the targeting context, technical merit of investigated method(s), and novelty of the work.

 All abstracts should adhere to the abstract template and be submitted online via easychair. 

 

Abstract submission

Submit your abstract before 1st January 2024

Submit abstract
Abstract template

Download our template here

Download template
 

 

 

Full paper submission 

Conference Proceeding uses author-supplied PDFs for all online publication. Authors are asked to prepare their papers using Microsoft Word, according to the guidelines and templates, and then convert these files to PDF. Full instructions on preparing your paper, along with templates, can be found here

 What you need to provide 

  • The PDF file of your paper: when preparing your paper ensure that you follow the author guidelines. When preparing your paper please check that: 
    • Maximum 8 pages  
    • Paper size is European A4. 
    • Margins are at least 25mm all round. 
    • The paper includes the author’s name and affiliation (full address including country). 
    • There are no headers or footers, within the paper. 
    • The PDF is free of formatting errors (e.g. corrupt equations, missing or poor resolution figures), since conversion from Word to PDF can introduce formatting errors. 
    • Text is single spaced, not double spaced. 
    • The PDF file is editable and not password protected. 
    • All pages are portrait (landscape pages should be rotated). 
    • Reference lists are checked for accuracy. References can only be linked via CrossRef if they are correct and complete. 
    • Figures are placed within the text, not collected at the end of the document. 
    • A thorough proof read is conducted to check standard of English and ensure wording is clear and concise. 
    • Ensure that your paper includes an abstract. 

Please note that only papers that have not been previously presented at another conference or published in other conference proceedings or journals can be submitted to this conference. 

Full paper submission

Submit your full paper before 1 March 2024

Submit full paper
Full paper template

Download our full paper template

Download template
 

 

 

 

Registration fees and process

The registration process begins once your paper is accepted. It is mandatory for at least one author of an accepted paper to register in order for the paper to appear in the proceedings and included in the technical program.

The registration fee covers your costs during the conference period including conference proceeding publication fee, lunch, and coffee break. Please note: you can join the conference banquet for an additional £50. 

Online registration closes: 20 June 2024 

Registration fees
 Types of fee Early bird fee (until 15/05/2024) Normal fee (after 15/05/2024)
 Student a,b  £250  £350
 Full delegate a  £400  £500
 Accompanying person c  £150   £150

 

a) A registered author is only allowed to present a maximum two papers including oral presentation and/or poster presentation. 

b) Full time student - not including post doctor - must provide proof of their full-time status. (A copy of your valid student ID card or a letter from your affiliated institution Head or Programme Director). 

c) The accompanying person is not allowed to attend the conference. The fee only covers their lunches and coffee. Please email the conference organisers to register the accompanying person. 

Register now

 

Important dates

  • Open for abstract submissions: 1 September 2023
  • Deadline for abstract submissions:  1 January 2024
  • Notification of abstract acceptance: 15 January 2024
  • Open for full paper submission: 16 January 2024
  • Deadline for full papers: 1 March 2024 
  • Notification of full paper acceptance: 1 April 2024
  • Final paper submission for conference proceeding: 1 May 2024
  • Deadline for early bird registration: 15 May 2024
  • Conference: 3 - 5 July 2024

 

 

Committee members

  • Professor Yupeng (Jack) Wu; University of Nottingham
  • Professor Veronica Soebarto; University of Adelaide
  • Professor Dionysia Kolokotsa; Technical University of Crete
  • Professor Wangda Zuo; Pennsylvania State University
  • Dr Shawn Liu; University of Nottingham
  • Dr Liwenbo Zhang; University of Nottingham
  • Dr Yanyi Sun; University of Kingston
  • Dr Xin Liu; University of Nottingham
  • Dr Yunyang Ye; University of Alabama
  • Dr Xu Han; University of Kansas
  • Dr Sen Huang; Oak Ridge National Laboratory
  • Dr Nikos Kampelis; Technical University of Crete
  • Dr Angeliki Mavrigiannaki; Technical University of Crete
  • Dr Jan -Frederik Flor's institution to Taylor's University
  • Dr Fedaa Abd-ALHamid, Al-Zaytoonah university of Jordan
  • Dr Deng Wu, University of Nottingham Ningbo
  • Dr Runqi Liang, University of Nottingham Ningbo
  • Dr Mary Myla Andamon, RMIT University
  • Dr Mark Dewsbury, University of Tasmania
  • Prof Marc Aurel Schnabel, Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University
  • Dr Larissa Arakawa Martins, University of Adelaide
  • Dr Elli Nikolaidou, South West Net Zero Hub
  • Dr Renjith Jayapalan-Nair, Design Builder
  • Dr Wei Zhang, Sichuan University
  • Dr Kostas Mourkos, Loughborough University
  • Professor Priya Rajagopalan, RMIT University
  • Dr Jose Manuel Santos, University of Madeira
  • Dr Ehsan Noroozinejad, Western Sydney University