The University of Oxford owns and manages 67 of those buildings and a fifth of its entire estate is listed.
Nick Brown, CFO and Bursar at Magdalen College, said his team is in the early stages of Net Zero strategies relative to some other institutions, but plans are “already throwing up challenges.”
The recyclability of existing structures, changing or updating heating sources, along with the huge operational challenge of displacing students when the physical works are underway - given the buildings are in use 50 weeks every year - are just some of the initial hurdles they’ve come across.
In particular, updating heating systems or improving insulation is an enormous task - although the College has an obvious site for ground source heating, its listed status means this may not be an option.
Nick Brown said: “Whilst there are areas that can be more easily insulated around the college site, that’s not enough to really achieve objectives as options are limited and the buildings are thermally inefficient.” Cost is obviously another huge factor.
We are going to have to spend millions of pounds doing what needs to be done. This will require additional funds at a time when pressure on finances is already high."
The challenge is broad but has to be started so his colleagues plan to run two pathfinder projects, including testing a hybrid heating approach and opportunities for improving insulation.
With so much to consider in the planning stage alone, often plans are drawn up when a retrofitting project is in its infancy and then a heritage specialist is engaged later. Instead, plans should include a heritage-led perspective from the outset. This way, you know you've listened to the building and you've let the building lead you.”
He suggests that ideally, project leads should let the challenge of each building actually guide the plans, as each will have its own quirks and nuances that need to be considered.
Lorraine King of Barton Willmore, now Stantec endorsed the point. “No two historic buildings are the same, they don't perform the same, they don't work the same way and they’re not built in the same way.”
This means we cannot look for one solution that’s deemed workable across the board. Lorraine advised: “We need to have the support solutions for the specific types of buildings to make all these necessary changes, before anything else."
The panel observed that many institutions have a big focus on reducing their operational emissions and will look at district-wide heating systems. They said that can be quite challenging because the estate is diverse and it's managed differently by different colleges.
The panel also discussed space utilisation and how that can be very low for a university or heritage building like a cathedral.
They considered how one of the key interventions could be finding ways to actually increase the space utilisation and make greater use of the buildings.
One of the answers they felt could work would be adding an element of new build to the existing estate, which can be challenging but sometimes necessary.
