Climate tech firm IES renews University of Nottingham partnership until 2025

Glasgow-based climate tech firm IES has renewed its Living Lab partnership with the University of Nottingham, meaning students and staff will continue to have access to its cutting-edge digital twin technology until at least 2025.

Through its Living Lab partnerships, IES works with universities to help them create digital twins of their campuses. Digital twins are fully scalable virtual models that behave just like their real world counterparts, and the technology can help uncover data to fuel decisions on where energy, carbon, capital and operational savings can be made.

IES’s digital twin of the University of Nottingham Park campus includes 280 buildings, and is used by academics to add new, interesting and diverse projects to their undergraduate portfolio in the area of ‘decarbonisation of the built environment’. The collaboration equips future engineers, architects and technology professionals with invaluable digital twin training and real world climate tech experience.

The Living Lab also enables the Estates team to better manage their building energy efficiency and plan interventions at lowest cost, lowest risk and maximum impact.

IES has been working with the University of Nottingham on various projects since 2013 including Trent Basin, a low-energy community situated within Nottingham Waterside bounded by the River Trent. IES created an interactive platform to enable the community to visualise its energy data in real-time.

IES founder and CEO, Don McLean, said of the renewed partnership: “IES is over the moon to be continuing to help the University of Nottingham carve out its route to net zero. It is also brilliant that through this partnership, more of the university’s students will be trained in our pioneering digital twin technology.

“Digital twins will continue to be the centrepoint of our work with the University of Nottingham over the coming years, and we look forward to providing them with the data and insight they need to make informed decisions about improving energy efficiency across the campus.”

Professor Mark Gillott, Chair in Sustainable Building Design at the Department of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Nottingham, said: “As we plan to hit our carbon reduction targets, we are delighted that our strategy will continue to be informed by data gathered by IES’ ground-breaking technology.

“This initiative also allows our students to gain realworld experience which they’ll carry with them into their professional lives too, so we are delighted to be able to offer this training to them through the partnership.”

Don McLean will be delivering a keynote speech on the use of Digital Twins for Decarbonisation at the 20th International Conference on Sustainable Energy Technologies, which will be held at the University of Nottingham on 15th – 17th August 2023.