Zero Ambitions Podcast

Reference is made some reports and articles in this episode, which we share here.Each Home Counts Review: https://www.eachhomecounts.com/ Housing Quality Network article: "Four key ingredients for sustainability in housing" by Jon Dtraaleyhttps://hqnetwork.co.uk/news/opinion-things-can-only-get-greener-four-key-ingredients-for-sustainability-in-housing-5772

An interview with James Traynor of ECD Architects about retrofit, EnerPHit, Portsmouth's Wilmcote House project (the largest scale retrofit of its type, in its day), and James's fabulous book about EnerPHit. https://www.ribabooks.com/enerphit-a-step-by-step-guide-to-low-energy-retrofit_9781859468197https://ecda.co.uk/projects/wilmcote-house-2/

Bankers Without Boundaries (‘BwB’), an innovator in finance, is a not-for-profit powered by former investment bankers to assist high impact projects that benefit the environment and social good. BwB works with governments, institutions, cities, and foundations to mobilize capital advisory and research services. They apply financial concepts and structuring expertise to projects to align them with the investment needs of capital markets, considering risk reduction, the scaling and generation of financial returns, alongside broader positive co-benefits and impacts. Their focus is to garner public and private institutional support for projects, enabling public funding to sufficiently leverage private capital to generate requisite scalability. They are committed to catalyzing investment within sustainable development, they are passionate about facilitating necessary solutions and innovation by accelerating entrepreneurship. Reducing emissions in the built environment is a complex problem with multiple components. Many of these complexities arise from an underlying assumption, in nearly all jurisdictions, that solving the problem is the responsibility of individual property owners.

This week we spoke to Barbara Lantschner of John Gilbert Architects. JGA have been dealing with retrofit for many years and specifically with developing monitoring processes that allow them to get to know the existing buildings that they are working with in order to come up with the most appropriate retrofit interventions and solutions. We discussed these processes and some of the publications released this year addressing with retrofit, particularly the LETI Climate Emergency Retrofit Guide. 

This week Rachael Owens, head of sustainability at BGY and coordinator at ACAN and Peter Smith of Beyond Zero Homes talk to us about all things embodied carbon and moving towards circular principles in construction. Rachael was involved in the campaign to regulate embodied carbon in the construction industry launched by ACAN earlier this year, without which the construction industry will not be able to decarbonise at pace. Peter was instrumental in creating the COP26 house which was designed to showcase how you can build and live sustainably by using timber and ecologically responsible cradle to cradle solutions, with a low whole-life carbon footprint.

It's easy sometimes to forget the human element of fuel poverty, and whilst recent energy cost rises are an annoyance to the vast majority reading this post, they are nothing more than that. However, we need to understand the human cost to over three million households in the United Kingdom who can't afford to heat their home and the misery and despair that fuel poverty can bring. This week we hear from Alex Warren, at the Wise Group, on the great work they are doing in supporting people who are unemployed or in fuel poverty. Work that supports those who are vulnerable and helps them navigate a system that can often present a challenge to those who need help the most. However, we hear about the report that they have commissioned Light Off to Lights On detailing the suffering faced by too many households in Scotland and the West. It's difficult reading, but it is necessary as we often talk about design or the retrofit of buildings in the abstract of those humans we'll ask to live in them. Warm, healthy, comfortable homes are critical to how we develop a housing system that is fit for purpose within the context of a just transition over the coming decade. We can use cheap red top headlines such as national disgrace, but that won't help the 600,000 families in Scotland who live in fuel poverty in cold, damp, and unhealthy homes.

Internet of things company IoPT have been providing remote monitoring equipment to social landlords now for several years. We hear the benefits that this type of monitoring can bring to both tenants and landlords and how it can help identify where help is needed, and savings can be made.

Conversation with Sara, Dan, Jeff and Alex on the work that ACAN are doing and how we can look to a grassroots movement in promoting the retrofitting of our homes in a sustainable way to tackle climate change.

Discussion with Jeff, Alex and Dan from User Experience is Everything on CoP26 and how communication is critical to how we progress sustainability and radical change in the built environment.https://www.everythingisuserexperience.com/

The episode features lessons learnt from district heating and the work that West Dunbartonshire have been doing on developing heat networks.