energies Article Towards Net Zero Carbon Economy: Improving the Sustainability of Existing Industrial Infrastructures in the UK Ali Shubbar 1, * , Mohammed Nasr 2 , Mayadah Falah 3 and Zainab Al-Khafaji 4,5   Citation: Shubbar, A.; Nasr, M.; Falah, M.; Al-Khafaji, Z. Towards Net Zero Carbon Economy: Improving the Sustainability of Existing Industrial Infrastructures in the UK. Energies 2021, 14, 5896. https:// doi.org/10.3390/en14185896 Academic Editors: Dimitrios Kalderis and Adriano Sacco Received: 17 August 2021 Accepted: 15 September 2021 Published: 17 September 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 School of Civil Engineering and Built Environment, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool L3 3AF, UK 2 Technical Institute of Babylon, Al-Furat Al-Awsat Technical University (ATU), Babylon 51015, Iraq; mohammed.nasr@atu.edu.iq 3 Building and Construction Engineering Technology Department, AL-Mustaqbal University College, Hillah 51001, Iraq; mayadahwaheed@mustaqbal-college.edu.iq 4 Al-Furrat Al-Awsat Distribution Foundation, Ministry of Oil, Babylon 51001, Iraq; zainabcivil90@gmail.com 5 Department of Building and Construction Technical Engineering, College of Technical Engineering, The Islamic University, Najaf 54001, Iraq * Correspondence: A.A.Shubbar@ljmu.ac.uk Abstract: To comply with the new net zero greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) target set by the United Kingdom government by 2050, different sectors including the industrial sector are required to take action to achieve this target. Improving the building envelope and production of clean energy on site are among the activities that should be considered by businesses to reduce their carbon emissions. This research analysis the current energy performance and carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions of an industrial building in Liverpool, UK utilizing the Integrated Environmental Solutions Virtual Environment (IESVE) software modeling. Then it has proposed some methods for improving the current performance and reduce the carbon footprint of the building. The results indicated that the installation of wall and floor insulation could decrease the energy usage and CO 2 emissions of the building by about 56.39%. Additionally, the production of clean energy on site using solar photovoltaic (PV) panels could reduce the annual CO 2 emissions by up to 16%. Furthermore, this research provided some figures about offsetting the rest of CO 2 emissions using different international offsetting schemes to achieve carbon neutrality of the building. Keywords: carbon neutrality; CO 2 emissions; carbon offsetting; clean energy; insulation 1. Introduction Climate change is considered as the main reason for many of the extreme weather conditions worldwide such as floods, storms, droughts, apocalyptic fires, the spread of deserts, rising sea levels and collapse of biodiversity [1]. One of the main contributors to climate change is the emissions of GHGs such as the carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) from different activities. Statistic figures indicated a continues rising in the emissions of CO 2 although the pandemic of COVID-19 has temporarily contributed to decreasing the CO 2 emissions worldwide [2]. Therefore, to conserve the environment, considerable actions must be taken to reduce the effect of such worldwide challenges that might leads to major environmental disasters [3]. In 2016, 195 countries including the UK have committed to limit the global warming below 2 ◦ C through Paris agreement [4]. During this agreement the concept of Carbon Neutrality has been laid down. Carbon neutrality means having a balance between the amount of CO 2 emissions produced and absorbing CO 2 from the atmosphere in carbon sinks [1]. The term carbon sinks are any system that absorbs more CO 2 comparison with releases to the atmosphere including oceans and forests. In 2019, the UK was the first nation to formally pledge to cut its CO 2 emissions to zero by 2050 [5]. This could be achieved by both decreasing the existing CO 2 emissions and removing it safely from the atmosphere. Energies 2021, 14, 5896. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14185896 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/energies