self build

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 basics of how to approach building better, interrogating the things that they commonly see going wrong, and offer some top tips for what to avoid.

They've been heavily involved in the delivery of flagship developments like Goldsmith Street, as well as being notable for their long-running practice. However it took a while for us to get to that because of some remarkable news about their Coaction non-profit.

Unexpectedly we were waylaid by some exciting developments in the work that their new training non-profit has been making, setting out to revolutionise training within the built environment by offering a basic grounding in PH (building physics) first to architectural students with plans to make this available to all professions within the built environment.

We did cover the top tips but only late on: the tl:dr is to get an experienced energy, retrofit, or passive house consultant involved at the earliest opportunity to help steer you right; it is an investment, not a cost.

Notes from the episode

• The Warm Consultancy's website is here
• Coaction's website for training is here too 
• The webinar Sally mentions is available to members of the Passive House Institute (PHI) and accessible here; we believe that it is the Quality assurance concepts for fast deep renovation approaches but I don't have a login so I can't check
• They also recommended checking last year's Efficiency Now campaign from the PHI as a place you can find some information in lieu of a login
• A Passive House Institute 'step-by-step article': Overall retrofit plan for step-by-step retrofits to EnerPHit Standard, by Jan Steiger and Eva Vahalova 
• Here’s some more info on the stepwise approach that is mentioned frequently too

**SOME SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**
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• Zero Ambitions Partners email address - zap@eiux.agency
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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 Passive House-qualified structural engineer in the UK, she is well-versed in trying unconventional approaches to structural design, planning for the future, and considering best use of resources.

Notes from the episode

• The Build Collective website
• Here’s the link for the ACAN talk and a link to the ACAN event page 
• IStructE Climate Emergency info
• An IStructE retrofit event
• ICE Decarbonisation info
• ICE Knowledge Networks (some of which are geared towards climate emergency issues)

**SOME SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**
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• Zero Ambitions Partners email address - zap@eiux.agency
• Subscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)
• Join ACAN
• Join the AECB 
• Join the IGBC
• Listen to Accelerate to Zero, Sara's podcast produced at BE-ST, on Apple or Spotify 
• Email Alex and Dan about websites, branding, and communications - zap@eiux.agency; Everything is User Experience

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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 Extinction Beckons art exhibition at the Hayward Gallery
• The Retrofit23 exhibition at the Building Centre 
• Architype's case study of the Hereford Archive and RecordsCentre
• Why Do we Make Everything So Complicated, a piece by Lloyd about that 'Radical Simplicity' Nick Grant article he references; I couldn't find the actual article but I'll update the notes with the link if Lloyd sends it on
• Seeing the Wood for the Trees, by Lenny Antonelli and Andy Simmons, from the pages of Passive House Plus
• The Deluded World of Window Replacement, from Lloyd's Substack, Upfront Carbon

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• Zero Ambitions Partners email address - zap@eiux.agency
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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 designers and tradespeople play their part in the war on carbon.

For UK and international listeners, this episode is a fascinating insight into the development of new, more nimble educational and training approaches that may bridge the gap between trades and design professionals in the advancement of sustainable building and retrofit know-how.

Notes from the episode

• DASBE (the Digital Academy for the Sustainable Built Environment)
• Build Up Skills App 
• The BIMzeED portal - anyone can register with this link in order to access the 12 modules

**SOME SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**
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• Zero Ambitions Partners email address - zap@eiux.agency
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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 Luxton has presented numerous shows across British TV, including Building the Dream, Homes by the Sea and Impossible Builds (More 4), World's Wierdest Homes, SuperCommuters, Best Laid Plans (Channel 4), Modern British Architects (Channel 5), Britain’s Hidden Heritage (BBC 1), Restored to Glory and Rebuilding The Past (BBC 2), Homes and Property (ITV) and The Great Treehouse Challenge (Sky Living). 

Charlie and his wife Kate Luxton also run an architectural practice, Charlie Luxton Design, whose work seems to be annoyingly well conceived.

Kudos to Grace Fraser from heat recovery ventilation supplier Airflow for connecting Jeff and Charlie.

Notes from the episode

• Salk Insitute: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/louis-kahn-salk-institute
• Ditchley park: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ditchley_Park
• The Camden project Jeff mentions:  https://passivehouseplus.ie/news/design-approaches/study-extreme-overheating-not-reflected-in-building-simulations
• Charlie's house - https://charlieluxtondesign.com/charlie-builds-house/
• Charlie Luxton Design's office, Black Barn Studios: https://charlieluxtondesign.com/buildings/black-barn-studios/
•  Airthings - Internal air quality monitoring: https://www.airthings.com/en-gb/
• Skipton Building society's carbon profiling of its building portfolio: https://www.skipton.co.uk/about-us/our-environment
• Charlie's Cornish holiday home:  https://www.granddesignsmagazine.com/self-build/charlie-luxton/
• Helen Macarthur Foundation: https://ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/
• RHS Malvern garden built from waste materials: https://charlieluxtondesign.com/rhs-malvern/

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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 slightly more esoteric subject: who can you trust? In other words, how difficult is to know what to do about anything. It's something we talk about amongst ourselves a lot, and presumably you our listeners find yourselves talking about much the same.

The challenge here can probably be best summed up by the endless heat pump debate, in which we're asked to often hold two contradictory and correct positions at the same time: every home can be heated by a heat pump vs. not every home is suitable for a heat pump. We thought Peter would be a great person to talk about it because of the length and breadth of his experience, and he's a great speaker.

We took in the housing market, heat pumps, hydrogen, retrofit, snake oil and more. In spite of our conversational meandering and rambling, we did actually manage to come up with, albeit a very short list, of people that we do think you can actually trust. Anyway, we hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did.

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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 the built environment, and this is one part of a body of work that is focused on unpicking the sort of detail that the industry really needs.

Their paper looks into carbon consumption in the residential sector, from both an operational and embodied perspective, forecasting results in line with Ireland's national development plan and climate action plan using a methodology that accounts for consumption, not just production.

Notes from the episode

• The paper we're discussing: A whole life carbon analysis of the Irish residential sector - past, present and future
• Their previous paper: Whole life carbon quantification of the built environment: Case study Ireland 
• Grant Chalmers' tweet illustrating changes in regional carbon consumption: April 2023 median carbon intensity gCO2eq/kWh) and power consumption breakdown (%). Data via Electricity Maps, table via R {gt} package.
• Another paper: Small Penises and Fast Cars: Evidence for a Psychological Link
• The Building in a Climate Emergency Research Lab

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• Zero Ambitions Partners email address - zap@eiux.agency
• Subscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)
• Join ACAN
• Join the AECB 
• Join the IGBC
• Listen to Accelerate to Zero, Sara's podcast produced at BE-ST, on Apple or Spotify 
• Email Alex and Dan about websites, branding, and communications - zap@eiux.agency; Everything is User Experience

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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 First design team's Instagram
• Modernise or Die by Mark Farmer 
• We haven't included the UK government website, as per Emma's recommendations (we're sure you'll be able to Google it though)
• Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A Moore

**SOME SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**
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• Zero Ambitions Partners email address - zap@eiux.agency
• Subscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)
• Join ACAN
• Join the AECB 
• Join the IGBC
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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 performance), how the effectiveness of building design is impacted is affected by location and climate, the importance of understanding embodied carbon versus operational (and how the emphasis and importance of each is will flip at some point soon), and the great work LETI is doing in creating guidance for retrofitting commercial buildings.

Notes from the episode

• Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)
• The paper about embodied carbon that we mention: A whole life carbon analysis of the Irish residential sector - past, present and future by Richard O Hegarty and Oliver Kinnane
• The LETI website, do check it and sign up to their mailing list, it's right there on the homepage.
  
  

**SOME SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**
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John Baguley, Director of Technical, Risk and Compliance at Countrywide Surveying Services joined us to talk about how sustainability in the built environment is being affected by market forces, and how energy efficiency is likely to impact market conditions.

A vastly experienced professional who has seen all sides of the industry his experience affords him a different perspective on all the usual angles. 

There are no simple solutions but we discussed how energy efficiency is affecting property valuations (well, it is and it isn't), how change is likely to be driven, and the writing that we're able to see on the wall.

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Events conspired against us this week and we didn't manage to get a recording together. Sorry.

In lieu of having something ready for you, we decided that we'd recommend some of the things that we're listening to. These are all personal recommendations, some related to our subjects, some not. They're all worth a listen though.

-------------------------------------------------
The Blindboy Podcast - Topographica Hibernica

Web / Apple / Spotify link to episode

-------------------------------------------------
Alex's recommendations

Evil Genius with Russel Kane - Marlon Brando

Apple / Spotify link to episode 

Guardian - Today in Focus Mouldy flats and bidding wars: how did the UK rental crisis get so bad?

Apple / Spotify link to episode 

The History of the English Podcast (Alex just said it’s worth working through this one from the start)
Apple / Spotify link to episode 

-------------------------------------------------
Jeff's recommendations

Lex Fridman Podcast - Sam Altman: OpenAI CEO on GPT-4, ChatGPT, and the Future of AI

Apple / Spotify link to episode 

Lex Fridman Podcast - Eliezer Yudkowsky: Dangers of AI and the End of Human Civilisation 

Apple / Spotify / YouTube link to episode 

The Blindboy Podcast - Witches Piss and Horses Skulls

Web / Apple / Spotify link to episode

-------------------------------------------------
Dan's recommendations

Tech Won’t Save Us - Why Green Capitalism Won’t Fix Climate Change w/ Adrienne Buller

Website / Apple / Spotify link to episode  

Ten Thousand Posts - Posting through the Housing Crisis

Apple /Spotify link to episode  

Trashfuture - Busting Offsets feat Dr Jess Green

Apple / Spotify link to episode  

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This week we're with Marion Baeli, an architect who is a retrofit pioneer, a partner at PDP London, a board member of the Passive House Trust, and the author of seminal retrofit-related text Residential Retrofit: 20 Case Studies.

Some time ago we saw her posting about the impact DPEs are having on the property market in France and we realised that we had to have her on.

We talk about the imminent reprise of her book, a look back at ten of those case studies and the lessons learned since (that's how we justified the clickbaity "mistakes" in the title, it's more about lessons than mistakes, that's why we added the question mark).

We also discuss progress and the significant changes that the retrofit industry has seen since the book was first published in 2012 (air source heat pumps, as it turns out).

Obviously, we talk about EPCs and DPEs too.

Notes from the episode

• Marion Baeli on LinkedIn and on the PDP website
• Le Monde Sans Fin - the french comic book about
• Princedale Road retrofit project in Passive House Plus and on PDP's own website
• The Scottish Housing News podcast we guested on, about the impact of passive house policy there, where we met Andrew Kubski who we reference; it's worth a listen
• Sara's podcast Accelerate to Zero, produced at BE-ST, on Apple or Spotify
  
  

**SOME SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**
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In this episode, we had the pleasure of Dr. Barry McCarron's company, from his car, during a break in the conference he was attending.

If you’re looking for an inspiring journey into academia and leadership in low-energy building, Barry’s story has you covered. We also talk about how passive house certification appears to mitigate risk from radon, the impact of further education (as opposed to academia), and how proper systems design is essential to making even passive houses work properly.

Barry earned his doctorate at Queens University Belfast in a piece of academic research of real consequence: comparing the levels of the deadly cancer-causing gas radon in passive houses to other dwellings.

Radon, the radioactive gas which kills roughly as many people as road deaths in Ireland, can increase in low-energy buildings. Barry's research covered why passive houses appear to buck the trend, itself something of a proxy for the wider ventilation conversation.

Now at South West College in Enniskillen - who recently developed the groundbreaking passive house premium-certified Erne Campus - he is the chair of the Passive House Association of Ireland and is doing powerful work to bridge the gap between academia and the construction industry.

Notes from the episode

• Passive House Association of Ireland
• South West College  
• Crest Centre (Centre for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology)
  
  

**SOME SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**
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Our guest on this episode is Helena Fitzgerald, a passive house designer, and architect whose experience of building her own passive house led her to move beyond architecture.

Taking a stance on passive house - as an attempt to be green - prompted self-reflection in Helena, which took her career off on what might seem a wild tangent. Now a research fellow in the Department of Economics at the University of Limerick, Helena's new direction is focused on equitable, community-centric, scalable sustainability.

Helena's home is a striking, architect-designed, one-off passive house. It's a home beyond reproach in terms of energy efficiency, although we might query the stove today, knowing what we now know about biomass. That said, its rural location bakes in car dependency and renders it a home that couldn't be for everyone - criticisms that are addressed directly, and thematically, in the course of our conversation.

As ever, it was a roving conversation with familiar themes: the importance of acting in a manner that is results-driven to guarantee desirable outcomes; technology on its own isn't enough, systemic solutions and localised community engagement are just as integral.

We even start nudging at revolution.

Notes from the episode

• Helena's passive home
• Citizen Innovation Lab - Limerick
• Smart Lab Limerick

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This week we’re talking space heating, with John Morehead of Wain Morehead Architects.

Last week Jeff had hoped to talk about the absurd space heating assumptions in the standardised calculations that go into things like EPCs and BERs, so we decided to dedicate this week's episode to it. Jeff's been keen to get John on for a while, so it seemed like a prim opportunity to tempt him to join us, and it worked.

That said, we didn't talk much about those assumptions and, unexpectedly, we started with a discussion of Feng shui. Don't worry though, we quickly segue into the discussion about space heating and the use of infrared heating as a complementary heating system.

It should be said that with the appropriate design strategies and post-occupancy assessment in place, there are massive opportunities to create spaces that better suit a user’s comfort needs, as well as making them more energy efficient, which will save money.

There's not much by way of show notes, we kept it mainly anecdotal. However, he did ask us to plug TUD's Master of Science in Building Performance (Energy Efficiency in Design).

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Here we go, part two of last week's recording with returning guests, Bill Bordass and Adrian Leaman.

This continues our response to that Times article that was doing the rounds last week, now looking at what we should be doing, in lieu of appropriate and demanding guidance from the institutions that dictate terms.

We pick up where we left off. Enjoy.

Notes from the episode

• The Usable Buildings website
• The article that sparked the episode - EPCs are a national scandal, from The Times 
• Newly Restored: E.F. Schumacher on Film (1977)
• Energy Performance of Non-Domestic Buildings: Closing the Credibility Gap
• Energy Performance in Use Government Policy
• Building performance evaluation in the UK: So many false dawns
• Buildings the Key to Energy Conservation (1979) 
• How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors Behind Every Successful Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration (2023), by the unpronouncable Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner  - 'Would have been better if they had not eulogised Gehry and toned down the hyperbole', as reviewed by Adrian
• The chart that Jeff refers to again from The Energy Performance Survey of Irish Housing
• Sleepwalking into unsustainability, a presentation
• The National Retrofit Hub LinkedIn page

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This week we've got a two-parter for you with returning guests, Bill Bordass and Adrian Leaman.

At first, we thought we'd do an episode in response to that Times article that was doing the rounds last week, and we did. It just didn't turn out as we expected.

At the last minute, we asked Bill Bordass and Adrian Leaman if they'd like to join us. Jeff had remembered just how deeply those guys had been involved in the subject of energy performance assessment, so we asked them, they were free, and we were delighted.

Bill and Adrian were really generous with their time, hence us having enough for two episodes this week. The first part (this one) was mainly spent looking into the past while Bill regaled us with a tale of what might have been, how EPCs came to be what they are, and where it all went wrong. Part two is more focused on how we might do better in the future.

It has a particular UK focus but the themes are universal. There are lots of lessons that we can learn from the tension between modeling and estimation, and the reality of how buildings perform in use.

We start the episode proper about seven or eight minutes in, so you can jump ahead, but you may miss Adrian's story about his energy efficiency tour behind the Iron Curtain and Albanian refugee defectors.

Notes from the episode

• The Usable Buildings website
• The article that sparked the episode - EPCs are a national scandal, from The Times 
• CIBSE TM 22 
• Buildings the Key to Energy Conservation (1979) 
• The chart that Jeff starts talking about from The Energy Performance Survey of Irish Housing
• Energy Performance of Non-Domestic Buildings: Closing the Credibility Gap

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• Zero Ambitions Partners email address - zap@eiux.agency
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With the EU closing in on a major revision to perhaps the single most important legislative driver for decarbonisation of buildings, the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), we spoke to the architect of the proposed changes, Ciarán Cuffe, who gave us some fascinating insights. It was a chance to talk about thinking big and the challenges associated with instituting large-scale change.

A veritable sustainability, built environment, and political polymath, Ciarán is the Green Party MEP for Dublin and rapporteur for the European Parliament on the next recast of the EPBD.

Originally published in 2002, the EPBD is the reason we have EPCs/BERs/DPEs, for all their flaws and benefits. It’s also the reason we have the nearly zero energy building (NZEB) standard as a mandatory requirement for new buildings across Europe since 2019.

But the original directive and previous recasts have left certain problems unresolved, and Ciarán told us about work to update the directive to ensure it can help to drive meaningful change in decarbonising the European building stock.

It's worth noting that Ciarán's not just a politician too. He’s a qualified planner, architect, lecturer at Technological University Dublin, and a former Minister for Planning in the Irish government.

**SOME SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**
We don't actually earn anything from this, and it's quite a lot of work, so we have to promote the day jobs.

• Zero Ambitions Partners email address - zap@eiux.agency
• Subscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)
• Join ACAN
• Join the AECB 
• Email Alex and Dan about websites, branding, and communications - zap@eiux.agency; Everything is User Experience

**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

All new homes in Scotland are set to be built to a Scottish equivalent of the passive house standard, under plans announced by the government recently. But at what cost?

A recent article in Project Scotland, while describing the aim of the policy as “admirable”, warned that it will “undoubtedly lead, at least in the short to medium term, to greater expense in a construction industry already suffering from spiraling costs and, ultimately, the price of housing rising.”

But does this concern stand up to scrutiny? To find out, we spoke with Dr. Shane Colclough, an academic and energy consultant who co-authored two papers comparing fully costed breakdowns of building to the passive house standard versus building regulations in Ireland and Northern Ireland, respectively.

But even if construction costs increase, that doesn’t mean development costs or house prices increase by a single penny, as construction economist Prof Tom Dunne argued in the progenitor of Passive House Plus magazine way back in 2007 (link below: Safe as Houses).

Notes from the episode

• Dr. Shane Colclough on LinkedIn
• The article that prompted this episode: Will the Scottish Government's move towards 'Passivhaus' support zero carbon ambitions?
• Ulster University paper Cost Optimal UK Deployment of the Passive House Standard
• Shane's Investigation of nZEB social housing built to the Passive House standard
• And that 2007 article on why higher energy performance specs don’t mean higher development costs: Safe as Houses
• Shane in Passive House Plus
• Passive House Association of Ireland (PHAI) 

**SOME SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**
We don't actually earn anything from this, and it's quite a lot of work, so we have to promote the day jobs.

• Zero Ambitions Partners email address - zap@eiux.agency
• Subscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)
• Join ACAN
• Join the AECB 
• Email Alex and Dan about websites, branding, and communications - zap@eiux.agency; Everything is User Experience

**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

We sat down with Ele George and Emily Braham to talk about all things Energiesprong and how they're making things happen for other people in the retrofit industry. They don't have all the answers, but they're determinedly seeking them with the right questions.

Energiesprong UK is a project that's finding ways to mitigate the myriad barriers to improving people's homes, reducing maintenance costs, and developing robust supply chains. From finance to manufacturing, managing relationship-between tenants and landlords, they're prototyping ideas and developing processes that are catalysing a nascent retrofit industry.

Importantly, a fascinating outcome of the novel approach that they're taking is how it supports inclusion and diversity, without even having to make an additional effort.

They are full of ideas. We learned a lot and were imbued with a massive sense of hope after speaking with them, enjoy.

Notes from the episode

• Energiesprong UK website
• The passive house that Raphael built

**SOME SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**
We don't actually earn anything from this, and it's quite a lot of work, so we have to promote the day jobs.

• Zero Ambitions Partners email address - zap@eiux.agency
• Subscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)
• Join ACAN
• Join the AECB 
• Email Alex and Dan about websites, branding, and communications (zap@eiux.agency; Everything is User Experience)

**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**