Zero Ambitions Podcast

Happy new year! This week's episode brings you a conversation with Ethan Wadsworth of DiscreteHeat the manufacturers of our new favourite energy efficient (non-radiator and non underfloor) based heating system ThermaSkirt. We're not there to bang on about a product we like, what we found interesting about this one is that it’s an overnight, award-winning success that took fifteen years to bring to fruition. This means that our conversation is mainly about what’s changed in the heating and building space to enable the growing demand for ThermaSkirt, and what that can tell us about the broader market for products related to sustainability and decarbonisation. Ethan had a lot to say about why the product is relevant now, not just what it does and how it works.There's a lot that folk in the decarbonisation sector could learn from these guys because they’ve really considered the customer experience of both the end consumer, the distributor, and the installer. This is proper business strategy using analysis of all user journeys and experiences, so we love it. We also talk about heating design for a bit too.Notes from the showThe ThermaSkirt websiteEthan Wadsworth on LinkedInThermodul vs Thermaskirt® – Skirting Heating Systems Compared, the Thermodul-produced article we start talking aboutThe ThermaSkirt YouTube channelThermaSkirt on Instagram**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.Follow us on the Zero Ambitions LinkedIn pageJeff, Alex, and Dan about websites, branding, and communications - zap@eiux.agency; Everything is User ExperienceSubscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)Check Lloyd's Substack: Carbon UpfrontJoin ACANJoin the AECB Join the IGBCCheck out Her Own Space, the renovation and retrofit platform for women (but not in a patronizing way)**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

Happy post-Christmas day, hope you made it through OK. Today we have part two of the latest Passive House Plus revisited, looking at Lloyd Alter's favourite article of 2021: Seeing the wood for the trees - Placing ecology at the heart of construction.Again, we're joined by authors Lenny Antonelli and Andy Simmonds talking about mass timber, embodied carbon, why we should just use less and, unexpectedly, the place of AI.It turned out to be an extra long one but it felt deserving of the space, so rather than butcher the conversation we thought we'd just cut it in two and let you hear the lot. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did.Notes from the showThe PH+ article: Seeing the wood for the trees - Placing ecology at the heart of constructionLenny Antonelli on LinkedinAndy Simmonds on LinkedInAn article with the 'just do less pyramid' from Treehugger: Can Architects Survive in a World Where We Have to Build Less?Another article with the 'just do less pyramid' from Treehugger: The Key to Green Building Is to Use Less StuffA link to the Half earth paper: Protecting half of the planet could directly affect over one billion peopleThe AECB Youtube channelBiomass - a burning issue, the AECB-commissioned article by Nick Grant and Alan Clarke (only the cached version appears to exist online now)The Guardian article about the 10% contributing the most carbon emissions  The Finnish paper Lloyd references: The sufficiency perspective in climate policy: How to recompose consumption**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.Follow us on the Zero Ambitions LinkedIn pageJeff, Alex, and Dan about websites, branding, and communications - zap@eiux.agency; Everything is User ExperienceSubscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)Check Lloyd's Substack: Carbon UpfrontJoin ACANJoin the AECB Join the IGBCCheck out Her Own Space, the renovation and retrofit platform for women (but not in a patronizing way)**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

Merry Christmas!This week we have a Passive House Plus revisited two-parter for you, led by our occasional co-host Lloyd Alter, looking at his favourite article of 2021: Seeing the wood for the trees - Placing ecology at the heart of construction.We're joined by authors Lenny Antonelli and Andy Simmonds and the conversation wheels around, covering the place of mass timber as a solution to construction's problems, embodied carbon, why we should just use less, and why it's so hard to use less, amongst lots of other things.It turned out to be an extra long one but it felt deserving of the space, so rather than butcher the conversation we thought we'd just cut it in two and let you hear the lot. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did.Notes from the showThe PH+ article: Seeing the wood for the trees - Placing ecology at the heart of constructionLenny Antonelli on LinkedinAndy Simmonds on LinkedInAn article with the 'just do less pyramid' from Treehugger: Can Architects Survive in a World Where We Have to Build Less?Another article with the 'just do less pyramid' from Treehugger: The Key to Green Building Is to Use Less StuffA link to the Half earth paper: Protecting half of the planet could directly affect over one billion peopleThe AECB Youtube channelBiomass - a burning issue, the AECB-commissioned article by Nick Grant and Alan Clarke (only the cached version appears to exist online now)The Guardian article about the 10% contributing the most carbon emissions  The Finnish paper Lloyd references: The sufficiency perspective in climate policy: How to recompose consumption**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.Follow us on the Zero Ambitions LinkedIn pageJeff, Alex, and Dan about websites, branding, and communications - zap@eiux.agency; Everything is User ExperienceSubscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)Check Lloyd's Substack: Carbon UpfrontJoin ACANJoin the AECB Join the IGBCCheck out Her Own Space, the renovation and retrofit platform for women (but not in a patronizing way)**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

It's all about shading, overheating, and solar gain with Zoe De Grussa this week. She's the author of that infamous Camden overheating case study that Jeff always references and, at the time of writing, is technical and sustainability consultant at the British Blind and Shutter Association (BBSA).We cover Camden, but perhaps more interesting is the conversation around the difficulties in modeling shading, and the consequent difficulty in communicating its value to a project. Despite shading measures being 3-4 times cheaper to install at the point of a building's origination, rather than retrofitting it when there's a problem, it's all too often one of the first things value-engineered out of the specification.Notes from the showZoe on LinkedInThe BBSA websiteThe Home Energy Modeling ConsultationZoe's infamous academic paper: Overheating Camden Case Study. A London Residential Retrofit Case Study: Evaluating passive mitigation methods of reducing risk to overheating through the use of solar shading combined with night-time ventilation. (You can pay for a version here too, if you want.) A BBSA video of the Camden case studySome new research from the Blinds Make Better Campaign, in collaboration with the University of Salford Energy House Labs The Good Homes Alliance shading guide: Shading for Housing Design Guide for a Changing Climate**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.Follow us on the Zero Ambitions LinkedIn pageJeff, Alex, and Dan about websites, branding, and communications - zap@eiux.agency; Everything is User ExperienceSubscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)Check Lloyd's Substack: Carbon UpfrontJoin ACANJoin the AECB Join the IGBCCheck out Her Own Space, the renovation and retrofit platform for women (but not in a patronizing way)**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

We are joined by Loreana Padron to talk about what it is that a Head of Sustainability does and, more broadly, the value of post-occupancy evaluation (POE) to all the stakeholders in a retrofit project.Loreana tells us about the path she's taken to becoming Head of Sustainability at Architecture firm ECD, a leading sustainability-focused practice, and we take some time to revisit the Wilmcote House project which we featured way back in 2021. This time, we're more focused on the POE aspect, in part, driven by the inclusion of the Wilmcote House project in Marion Baeli's 10 retrofits revisited project which we featured back in April.Some listeners may want to go back to episode, 23 EnerPHit at Scale with James Traynor of ECD Architects. It's a very old one, so please bear in mind that as badly produced as this podcast may be now (still) we've got a lot better. The content is excellent still though because James is brilliant and it's an amazing project. Listen out for news about the retrofit design course she's been editing and the 'secret' group of heads of sustainability, something that should be a much more common model for sharing knowledge, providing an opportunity for bigger practices who can invest in research to share it with smaller practices to further the cause.Notes from the showLoreana Padron on LinkedInWilmcote House on ZAP in 2021 (e23): EnerPHit at Scale with James Traynor of ECD ArchitectsECD's page on Wilmcote HousePassive House Plus on Wilmcote HouseThat canary air monitor that Jeff mentions: Canairi**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.Follow us on the Zero Ambitions LinkedIn pageJeff, Alex, and Dan about websites, branding, and communications - zap@eiux.agency; Everything is User ExperienceSubscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)Check Lloyd's Substack: Carbon UpfrontJoin ACANJoin the AECB Join the IGBCCheck out Her Own Space, the renovation and retrofit platform for women (but not in a patronizing way)**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

Today we're talking about standards. In short, it's about how standards are written and why retrofit shouldn’t just be about products or carbon. It's never short with us though, is it?We're sure that all of our listeners will have complained about PAS2035/2030 at some point, admiring its ambition while lamenting its restrictions. We've all certainly wondered how they come to be like that too.So, we thought we'd have a go at humanising the UK's most prominent retrofit specification and guidance, by introducing our listeners to its author, Sarah Price. We meander our way around PAS, CarbonLite, Passive House Plus, the great Preston retrofit catastrophe, and even get onto the cases for, and against, spray foam insulation.Notes from the showSarah on LinkedInWikipedia's page on PASBSI's page on PAS 2035/2030The great Preston retrofit catastrophe in Passive House Plus magazineThe CarbonLite building standard (don't judge it on the web page)**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.Follow us on the Zero Ambitions LinkedIn pageJeff, Alex, and Dan about websites, branding, and communications - zap@eiux.agency; Everything is User ExperienceSubscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)Check Lloyd's Substack: Carbon UpfrontJoin ACANJoin the AECB Join the IGBCCheck out Her Own Space, the renovation and retrofit platform for women (but not in a patronizing way)**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

We invited Tania Jennings back. Most folk in the retrofit or social housing space will probably be aware of Tania from LinkedIn and the myriad jobs she has. If you don’t know her yet, check her LinkedIn.Anyway, she wrote a thing for Architect’s Journal about fuel poverty, Covid, and inevitably retrofit and it was excellent. It sparked a conversation about why we’re barely making a dent in resolving the massive pile of retrofit problems in front of us, one that seemed ripe for the podcast, so we brought Jeff and Alex into it too.Broadly, we need better roadmaps and collaboration to enable the change we want to see. We know that the solutions are, it's just that we're not able to deploy them if we carry on going about things the way we currently are. Notes from the showTania's article: Poor housing and Covid deaths: it’s the same damn mapWikipedia's page on MalthusianismThe Association of Local Energy Officers (you don't need to have that specific job title to join their ranks)Check the National Retrofit Hub**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.Follow us on the Zero Ambitions LinkedIn pageJeff, Alex, and Dan about websites, branding, and communications - zap@eiux.agency; Everything is User ExperienceSubscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)Check Lloyd's Substack: Carbon UpfrontJoin ACANJoin the AECB Join the IGBCCheck out Her Own Space, the renovation and retrofit platform for women (but not in a patronizing way)**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

If you fancy, you can settle in for a long one this week, in which Jeff and Dan speak with award-winning Canadian architect and passive house designer Cedric Burgers.We cover all sorts because he has led a pretty interesting life and he has a lot to say about sustainable building design, particularly his love for passive house as a philosophy, the drivers of change in favour of sustainable design, and the experiences and people that have influenced him.It's long but there's a lot in there and we could have gone on. Notes from the showCedric on LinkedInThe Burgers Architecture websiteBurgers Architecture on Instagram**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.Jeff, Alex, and Dan about websites, branding, and communications - zap@eiux.agency; Everything is User ExperienceFollow us on the Zero Ambitions LinkedIn pageSubscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)Check Lloyd's Substack: Carbon UpfrontJoin ACANJoin the AECB Join the IGBCCheck out Her Own Space, the renovation and retrofit platform for women (but not in a patronising way)**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

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 intended to sound like an advertorial but, listening back it does a little. This is because it's a product that we're enthusiastic about. We hope that you are too.Notes from the showSam on LinkedInThe IndiNature websiteJeff's whole life carbon presentation from the AECB Conference 2022**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.Jeff, Alex, and Dan about websites, branding, and communications - zap@eiux.agency; Everything is User ExperienceFollow us on the Zero Ambitions LinkedIn pageSubscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)Check Lloyd's Substack: Carbon UpfrontJoin ACANJoin the AECB Join the IGBCCheck out Her Own Space, the renovation and retrofit platform for women (but not in a patronising way)**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

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 experience and context for understanding the subject. It’s a nerdy episode too, in a good way, so it may bear a few listens because we cover a lot in an hour. We start with a discussion of the process of creating the underlying EPD data for straw and go from there, through making net calculations, accounting for carbon stored in buildings, institutional guidance, concrete and carbonation. Notes from the showJohn on LinkedIn John's Sustainable Build Consultancy websiteThe RICS Whole Life Carbon methodologyThe LETI Climate Emergency Design GuideLast call for Retrofit ReimaginedIf you're near Glasgow on 11 November, go! **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.Jeff, Alex, and Dan about websites, branding, and communications - zap@eiux.agency; Everything is User ExperienceFollow us on the Zero Ambitions LinkedIn pageSubscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)Check Lloyd's Substack: Carbon UpfrontJoin ACANJoin the AECB Join the IGBCCheck out Her Own Space, the renovation and retrofit platform for women (but not in a patronising way)**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**