Indian steel giant Tata Steel has unveiled a Sustainable Building Envelope Centre (SBEC) in North Wales, UK in conjunction with the Welsh Assembly Government and Cardiff-based Low Carbon Research Institute (LCRI), with the aim of developing green and sustainable construction technologies in building projects.
Accordingly, SBEC, based at Tata Steel's site at Shotton, will be a showcase for sustainable products and will test and monitor new integrated heating, energy and ventilation systems on the fabric of buildings. SBEC will create building façades - the walls and roofs - which will transform the buildings from being energy consumers into energy generators.
Tata Steel's involvement in the £6.5 million (about $10.5 million) SBEC project is just the latest in a number of investments in technology with the aim of improving the sustainability both of the steel industry and the industries it services.
In addition, Tata Steel and Dyesol, a maker of dye-sensitized solar cells, recently announced that their decision to expand their £11 million ($17.7 million) joint photovoltaics development project based at the PV Accelerator Centre at the Tata Steel site at Shotton.
Meanwhile, Tata Steel's £20 million ($32.2 million) SPECIFIC (Sustainable Product Engineering Centre for Innovative Functional Industrial Coatings) project at Baglan in South Wales has been set up to study other new coatings for steel and other substrates that can generate power.