We’re pleased to announce that Sarah Lee has made the shortlist for AJ100’s Sustainability Champion award.
Sarah is a Senior Associate Architect, RIBA South West Chair and Founding Member of Future Plymouth 2030.
Using her position as a designer and industry leader, she has become an influential advocate for urgent carbon reduction in the built environment, promoting opportunities for learning, upskilling and collaboration.
Having represented RIBA South West at Climate Emergency meetings across Devon since 2019, she repeatedly heard that clients and design professionals felt they lacked the knowledge needed to plan, design and deliver low carbon buildings.
So, she teamed up with volunteers from RIBA Plymouth, the Sustainable Earth Institute at the University of Plymouth, and Plymouth City Council and launched the Future Plymouth 2030 initiative in 2020 to:
- explore collaborative ways to achieve regional/national carbon reduction targets;
- empower people, with knowledge and tools, to make change and take positive climate action;
- help to achieve a more sustainable future for Plymouth, the UK and the world.
Despite its name, the event programme explores topics which are relevant at a global level with national speakers but also local experts, practitioners and contractors presenting successful case studies, projects and initiatives.
Since its launch, the series has been a huge hit achieving engagement from students and lecturers to local construction professionals, Local Authority officers, clients and developers. Season One, which ran between November 2020 and June 2021, had amazing success:
- 14 live webinars
- 28+ hours of catch-up content
- 48 speakers from a wide range of professions and sectors
- 1200+ live webinar attendees globally
- 7,000 web visitors
- 580 social media followers
- Plymouth City Council also made their support of the series a formal action within their Climate Emergency Action Plan in January 2021.
Now in Season Two, Sarah is working hard to build on these achievements and her efforts are being noticed, with former RIBA South West Chair, Jane Hamlyn, commenting:
“Sarah’s work and focus in relation to the issue of climate change, the major challenge of our time, makes her the ideal person to lead the RIBA South West region over the next couple of years. What she has already achieved in Plymouth in terms of raising awareness and engaging with a wide range of people is really exciting. The region is in safe hands.”
Outside of her work with Future Plymouth 2030, Sarah is busy leading Stride Treglown’s Net Zero Carbon and Passivhaus strategy. She has also joined the Low Carbon Devon Steering Group and has become Non-Exec Director of PEC-Renewables.
Please get in touch if you’d like to find out more about Sarah’s work, or head over to www.futureplymouth2030.co.uk