This week we're talking about natural fibre insulation and the potential of biogenic building products with IndiNature manufacturer (and co-founder) Sam Baumber . It feels like a timely follow-up to last week's episode about quantifying embodied carbon, particularly in relation to the role biogenic products have in providing a mid-to-long-term carbon buffer. But we get into the other aspects of interest, addressing fire safety, health, thermal performance, and economic benefits. It wasn't intend...
Nov 14, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 124
If you’re looking to understand how to approach carbon accounting in the built environment, we’ve got you. Brought in to tackle some big questions around accounting for carbon we were joined by sustainable building expert John Butler . Jeff’s been talking about getting John on for ages, for reasons he explains in the episode, and when we caught sight of an article he’s co-authored for the next issue of Passive House Plus we realised that we had the perfect excuse. John provides us with a lot of ...
Nov 07, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 123
Jeff received a press release that piqued his interest, so we invited the man behind the call to action, Joseph Kilroy , (Head of Policy and Public Affairs at the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) ). Joseph joins us to talk about their ideas for increasing the pace of change required to meet the ubiquitous net zero 2050 targets. They're calling for government to incentivise better building practices by using the tax system to create an economic environment that supports the spirit of climat...
Oct 31, 2023•57 min•Ep. 122
This week we're joined by Mike Fell , energy researcher at UCL, amongst many other things. We've been following Mike's work for a while, (mainly because the pump:chic work is really interesting to us) and when we clocked he's co-authored this paper about realist approaches in energy research we saw an opportunity to bring him onto the podcast. Realist approaches ask not just ‘what works?’, but ‘for whom does it work, under what circumstances, and why?', all good subjects for enquiry in any proje...
Oct 23, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 121
This week Jeff introduced us to a new friend he met while working on a EU funded green finance project, Alexandra Hedesiu , Head of ESG & EU Advisory Services at EnerSave Capital . The EU Life-funded project is called Smarter Finance for EU, and its aim is to develop the market for credible green home certifications and associated green mortgage, loan and development finance products, with €8.5bn worth of projects already built or planned under a previous phase of the Smarter initiative. As ...
Oct 16, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 120
In the midst of a weirdly warm October for this part of the work, we're talking about thermal comfort in building design with Huda Elsherif and Andy Simmonds about a project they've been collaborating on in Tanzania . While the lessons we can learn from it might not be immediately obvious, there are plenty of them there to be had as our climate grows warmer. In terms of building design it's already clear that we should be thinking ahead, planning for today's needs and building with one eye on fu...
Oct 09, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 119
Lloyd Alter introduced us to Passive House Accelerator earlier this year and it turns out that we're doing some quite similar work, promoting high-performance building, sharing innovation, and elevating thought leadership. Instead of starting a blood feud, we decided to invite Zack Semke onto the podcast to talk about what they're up to and see what we can learn from them. As it turns out, they're doing some really interesting stuff and Zack had already interviewed Jeff ages ago. Seems like we s...
Oct 02, 2023•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 118
We've a slightly different episode for you this week. Our guest is Ellora Coupe who we think has a big part to play in the retrofit space without performing one of its traditional roles. Ellora is the founder of Her Own Space , a platform that provides a women-only space to share knowledge, insight, support, and help in all things to do with renovation. It's an incredibly engaged community that has an awful lot to offer the whole industry if we're open to paying attention and offering some suppo...
Sep 25, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 117
It was about time we had someone from the Irish Green Building Council (IGBC) join us on the podcast. So Jeff invited Marion Jammet, the IGBC's Head of Policy and Advocacy , to join us to talk though a recent white paper they published in conjunction with the Institute of International and European Affairs . The paper is titled: Reviewing the Co-benefits of Energy Efficiency in an Irish context and it's well worth a look for all of our listeners. While its focus is on the situation in Ireland sp...
Sep 18, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 116
We often talk about the notion of selling high performance building to people but we rarely seem to talk with people who actually deal with the customers. In an effort to fill this gap we were joined by Andy Mitchell , MD at Green Building Store , a long-established retailer of all the things a high-performance building might require, and a passive house specialist. We start with ventilation before meandering our way through customer needs, the value of design, passive house, window sills, retro...
Sep 11, 2023•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 115
More heat-related chat this week. We're with Lisa Tresedar of Kensa Utilities joined us. She’s the string-puller behind Kensa’s Heat the Streets project the success of which has garnered national coverage because of its innovation and its success so far ( which is now up for an award ). Heat the Streets is a pioneering project in which Kensa sought to provide a Cornish village, that wasn’t on the gas grid, with its own grid infrastructure using a geothermal heat network and heat pumps. So, we ta...
Sep 04, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 114
'EnerPHit need not be any more expensive than retrofit': those are the words that we put into the mouth of this week's guest Mel Reynolds. He stood by them, even if they weren't his own, but advisedly. It's not necessarily easy, but it can be done, and it can be scaled up. Mel took us through his experience in working on high-performance buildings, learning passive house principles, undertaking his own new builds, and applying everything he's learned to carry out EnerPHit-standard retrofit. The ...
Aug 28, 2023•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 113
Returning champion, Dave Pearson of Star Refrigeration joins us to talk about the viability of heat networks. There loads we can learn from Dave's experience, so keep a notepad handy. Rather than talk in the abstract, we discussed the conditions that make them viable, why anyone should consider one, and how we can make them happen. Notes from the show Dave Pearson on LinkedIn The Star Refrigeration website An example of Dave's blunt and incisive candour on LinkedIn The 'Fairopoly' website and an...
Aug 21, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 112
Lauding an alternative viewpoint to always aiming for the loftiest standards, in this PH+ Revisited Lloyd is championing Toby Cambray's Insulate Britain-inspired article, from February 2022: Let's get decarbonisation done . It's an article about taking a differently-considered approach to domestic decarbonisation strategy and one that Lloyd has referenced frequently because of its refreshingly pragmatic look at prioritising our action. Should we favour deep, whole-house retrofits as per traditio...
Aug 14, 2023•41 min•Ep. 111
Joined by returning champion, Rufus Grantham , we're talking about using community and place-based approaches to catalysing large-scale retrofit. To this end he's set up a new consultancy Living Places and he'll tell you all about it this week. We're not pretending it's actually easy, but if you create the opportunity the finance will follow, and setting up the opportunity is a lot harder than finding money that wants to be put to 'work'. We cover everything we can in the time we have: net zero ...
Aug 07, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 110
Welcome home Duncan Smith ! And, we're pleased to introduce Richard Orr, Head of Asset and Regeneration at River Clyde Homes . We've been alluding to the things that Duncan is up in his new role as Head of Energy & Sustainability, so we were delighted when he said he'd come back to tell us all about his new life in Greenock. The work they're doing should be as significant for private developers as it is for the social housing sector. It's a big strategic project, providing better homes for t...
Jul 31, 2023•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 109
Kit Knowles is a sustainability consultant whose pioneering practice, Ecospheric, is forging its own path, concerned with making the greatest impact, getting things done, and big backer of research so they can learn how to do better. This week’s episode can be summarised as being about “the inherent conservation of energy principles associated with a building” i.e. design before fabric, and doing the work on paper before you get close to construction. Hence, ‘fabric second, not fabric first’. Hi...
Jul 24, 2023•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 108
Today, we have a new show on the feed. Long-time friend and contributor to the Zero Ambitions Universe, Lloyd Alter is taking the reins to look back at some of the fine work that Jeff has commissioned over the years, with a mind to making it more accessible to a wider audience. So, in parallel with the main show, Lloyd will be curating a tour through some of the best of Passive House Plus, interviewing the work's authors, and looking at the subject matter from a transatlantic perspective. This w...
Jul 17, 2023•55 min•Ep. 107
Air quality matters, that's the subject for this week in our conversation with Simon Jones and it's all about ventilation. In this instance, Air Quality Matters is Simon's new consultancy offering outcome-focused ventilation strategy. Simon is a professional with nearly 20 years of experience within the housing, construction, and building services sector. He's an Associate Member of both The Institute of Environmental Science and the Institute of Air Quality Management, and; he's acted as an exp...
Jul 10, 2023•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 106
This week we are spreading the word about the Buildings Action Coalition (BAC) , a coalition of professionals from all areas of the built environment, from all over the planet, brought together to support a UN-backed global target for 'near-zero emissions and resilient buildings to become the new normal by 2030'. Mindful of this 2030 decline, the BAC is bringing professionals together to "turbocharge our progress and work together to make this a decade of delivery". Jeff was able to arrange for ...
Jul 03, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 105
This week we're joined by Gillian Campbell , the Communications and Public Affairs Lead at Existing Homes Alliance Scotland , a professional with a wealth of experience in the housing sector. Gillian has been involved in some really interesting work around influencing government policy around their retrofit strategy. In particular, their research has revealed insights that are relevant to anyone in the retrofit sector: from the need for good messaging, to the importance of timing in using it, an...
Jun 26, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 104
This week we met Peter Warm and Sally Godber , a father and daughter team well known in low energy building for their work at their Warm consultancy . Although Peter may now be retured they've both been instrumental in Warm, consultancy in volved in testing and certification of buildings, as well as training for professionals. We hadn't intended to focus on passive house, again, thinking that we could dig into their experience as certifiers for low-energy buildings. Our idea was to ask about the...
Jun 19, 2023•1 hr 33 min•Ep. 103
This week Beth Williams joined us to talk about structural engineering and sustainability. She's an associate at Build Collective , (one of Jeff's favourites), and a professional who is long-steeped in green building practice. While there were some rash accusations of 'nepo baby' status, it seems that economic casualty seems fairer. Trained as an architect Beth went where the work was after the global economic crisis in 2008 and found her true calling in structural engineering. As the only Passi...
Jun 12, 2023•1 hr 35 min•Ep. 102
This week we have a transatlantic expert's perspective on the state of sustainable building in Ireland and the UK. Friend of the show, Lloyd’s Alter joined us after a research trip and drinking holiday to the UK. We thought it would be interesting to ask him to tell us about what learned on his travels and he offered us hiss thoughts on wood, the inspiring projects he visited, the people he met, cycling in Dublin, ventilation, air quality, transport, and all sorts. Notes from the episode That Ex...
Jun 05, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 101
With the world waking up to the need to rapidly decarbonise buildings, quick-fire, quality education and training tailored to the industry's needs is essential. But doesn't training in how to fly drones for budding building pathologists sound too much like fun? This week we spoke to Lis O'Brien and Benny McDonagh of TUS about an exciting new platform, DASBE (the Digital Academy for the Sustainable Built Environment) , which offers an excellent range of eye-opening courses designed to help Irish ...
May 29, 2023•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 100
People off the telly don't tend to know the first thing about sustainability, let alone possess a properly anoraky understanding of the subject, but Charlie Luxton is different. Jeff and Alex spoke to Charlie about his approach to sustainability, how to communicate about the benefits of sustainability, asking more questions to our clients, and about the state of architectural education, among other things. For those who, like Jeff, have been living under a rock these past 20 years, Charlie Luxto...
May 22, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 99
This week, Jeff, Alex and Dan are joined by Dr. Peter Rickaby , a man who should need little introduction to those who know the sector well, and to the listeners of our podcast, he's been on twice before. To those less familiar with him, he's an expert in the sector, who's devoted a career to improving energy efficiency in the built environment in the UK with a particular interest in retrofit. This week, rather than talk about a particular piece of work or technology, we wanted to talk about a s...
May 15, 2023•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 98
This week we're joined by Dr. Oliver Kinnane and Dr. Richard O'Hegarty of University College Dublin to discuss their recently published paper: A whole life carbon analysis of the Irish residential sector - past, present and future . In some ways it's quite a technical episode, delving into calculation methodology, but one tempered by lots of meandering diversions. The pair are academics who both occupy positions in the rarefied world of academia and can hold their own space at the coal face of t...
May 08, 2023•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 97
This week Alex and Dan were joined by Emma Elston (Sustainability Associate) and Amandeep Singh Kalra (Associate Director) to talk about all things MMC (modern methods of construction). The pair are working on some pioneering projects that are utilising MMC in order to deliver value throughout the supply chain, including a construction pattern book that could be of massive value to everyone involved, long into the future. Notes from the episode Be First Regeneration website / LinkedIn The Be Fir...
May 01, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 96
For a change, it's an episode that mainly concerns sustainability for non-residential building design. Friend of the show, James Woodall joined us to talk about his experiences in sustainable architecture in all its complexity, and how to help clients do better work by challenging briefs, asking difficult questions, and then help clients to answer those questions. We also covered the untapped potential for rewarding positive outcomes by promoting them (i.e. a Michelin star guide for building per...
Apr 24, 2023•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 95
