Zero Ambitions Podcast

Last week Jeff, Dan, Sara and Duncan met up with Dr Peter Rickaby to talk about all things retrofit. The conversation centred on PAS 2035 and the work that is going on to review the process over the coming year. However, as usual, we got so involved in the various different themes around retrofit that we made enough for two podcasts so this is part one with part two coming out on Thursday.

Great discussion with Yogini of the Passivhaus Trust, Dr Ken Gibb at Glasgow University and Chris Morgan of John Gilbert Architects on the retrofit of the sandstone tenement block in the Southside of Glasgow at Niddrie Road to EnerPHit standards. 

The AECB is a network of individuals, companies & organisations promoting sustainable building since 1989. With over 1800 members, their aim is to bring together tradespeople, architects, engineers, and builders interested in low carbon retrofit to train and promote best practices, bring about lasting and sustainable change within the construction Industry and push toward net-zero targets. In this podcast, we speak to Andy Simmonds CEO of the AECB retrofit standard, CarbonLite, and the Low Energy Buildings Database (LEBD), PH Ribbon and embodied carbon and loads more. 

The AECB is a network of individuals, companies & organisations promoting sustainable building since 1989. With over 1800 members their aim is to bring together tradespeople, architects, engineers, builders anyone interested in low carbon retrofit to train and promote best practices.  With the aim of bringing about lasting and sustainable change within the construction Industry and pushing toward net-zero targets

Decarbonising the built environment is the greatest engineering challenge the UK has ever faced. We are now in an unprecedented period of transformation that requires innovation at speed and scale. The recent rebranding of Construction Scotland Innovation Centre to Built Environment – Smarter Transformation or BE-ST marked a strategic change in how we address the issues within the built environment and climate change. In this episode, we speak to Stephen Good and Douglas Morrison about the plans the organisation have and the work they are doing around low carbon learning.

This week we’ve gone back to an episode of the podcast that we recorded in the Autumn of 2021 about the UK Energy Market with Professor Kevin Albertson.  The episode was made just after the Ofgem price cap increase in October.  We discussed the UK energy market and how it came about, and the opportunity for the Government to get involved, both in regulating and providing energy to try and mitigate fuel poverty. Given the latest price increase and energy becoming unaffordable for many households – with average bills potentially reaching £3,000 this year and fuel poverty affecting up to 40% of households – we thought that we would revisit the chat with Kevin.

Conversation with Chris Clarke, who is the Performance and Improvement Director at Scape Group. Scape is one of the UK's leading public sector procurement authority within construction and services. Scape is a leading provider of services that accelerate project delivery, embed value for money and create a positive procurement experience.

We met with Nathan Gambling of the Beta Teach platform and BetaTalk podcast. A champion for better heating systems, better training and education, renewables, and clean technology.We talked about the challenges and complexities associated with heating engineering, not just heat pumps, and the need to optimise our existing heating infrastructure in order to begin seriously reducing demand because we can't change everything at a stroke. We also discussed challenges and problems around training, finding good engineers, and their value, whether it's really appreciated or not.BetaTeach is his platform for heating engineers. BetaTalk is his own award-winning podcast that's well worth a listen. 

After our scheduled guest postponed their appearance we took the opportunity to discuss an issue that's been a little bit fractious in the Zero Ambitions chat: should be building new homes at all? Heads up: it was an evening pod, some drink had been taken; apologies if the early reference to war in Ukraine sounds a bit glib, we aren't able to publish the pre-record chat was a little less centred on us; also Sara was on holiday, and Rachael dropped out at the last minute, so it's a bit of a boys-club episode. There's a little mild profanity too. Some links to things we mentionedPassive House Plus magazine (soon to feature that article Jeff has been wrestling with)Orson Welles getting drunkRonald Rovers: There is no ‘end of life' of a building…Kwaijo Social Housing TwitterAlex's French book: Construire ou rénover sa maison Chicken in a can

Heating problems: systemic issues around design, accessibility, and economicsWe talked about how poor system design inhibits accessibility (and optimisation), how the heating industry falls short in terms of diversity, and how difficult it is to find the right solutions, for all sorts of reasons.