Zero Ambitions Podcast

This week's episode is all about the lessons learned in carrying out a low-carbon retrofit. Natalie Black (Enbee Architecture + Design) and Toby McLean (Allt Environmental Structural Engineers) joined us to talk through their experiments and experiences on the renovation of a derelict house in Muswell Hill, London that was shortlisted for the Architects Journal Retrofit and Reuse awards this year.This is a project that could easily be misrepresented as a Grand Designs-style endeavour that's only representative of what you can do if you've got loads of capital and capacity, but that wouldn't be fair. This project should really be seen as an example of what you can achieve when you've got loads of capital and the capacity to experiment. The lessons learned here aren't going to solve the housing crisis but they can contribute to resolving the climate crisis, and this is what's motivating our guests. Like many of our listeners, Natalie and Toby are built environment professionals who have become increasingly driven to change how they work by the dawning realisation that the climate crisis is upon us. We also discuss whether you can actually have a low-carbon basement.Links for the PhD applications are below too.Notes from the showNatalie Black on LinkedIn The Muswell Hill low-carbon houseThe Enbee Architecture + Design websiteThe Allt Environmental Structural Engineers' websiteNatalie's LinkedIn post about low-carbon basementsEnbee's 12-minute diary film about the Muswell Hill projectEnbee's short film (under 2 mins) about the Muswell Hill projectNatalie's blog about her workPhD #1 - Balancing Supply and Demand: Developing a Net Zero Energy Framework for Difficult-to-Retrofit Buildings in NottinghamshireNottingham Trent University deadline 8th Dec, start Apr 2025, Led by: Dr Orla Williams (UoN), Co-Supervisors: Dr Kate Simpson (NTU) and Prof Richard Bull (NTU); Community Supervisor(s): Phil Berrill (Nottinghamshire County Council), Chris Beattie (Inspire)PhD #2 - Sustainable Construction UK: Investigating the UK construction industry’s culture in relation to meeting long-term social, economic and environmental goalsNottingham Trent University, deadline 14th Feb, start Sep 2025, led by Prof Gavin Killip and Dr Ani RaidenPhD #3 - Re-imagining energy retrofit and home adaptation to deliver safe and resilient homes during interconnected energy, health, housing and climate crisesNottingham Trent University, deadline 14th Feb, start Sep 2025, led by myself with Dr Penelope Siebert and Prof Rowena Hill**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 page (we still don't have a proper website)Jeff, 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**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

Our guest, Liz Male has been on our radar for a while. She is a figure who has been working in the construction sector since the 1990s, an ally to the sustainability sector, a great communicator, and an experienced thinker.When we met earlier in the year we talked about a lot of things, but the consistent theme of our conversation was 'why we need to tell better stories about the built environment'. That said, we kept our powder as dry as we could and moved on to discuss when we might be able to get her onto the podcast to talk about it from the ZAP platform.We get a lot into the chat. Of particular interest is the historical perspective that Liz can offer. A lot has changed since Koyoto Hope you enjoy it as much as we did.Notes from the showLiz Male on LinkedInLiz Male Consulting Ltd website (LMC) websiteLMC on LinkedInNational Energy Foundation**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 page (we still don't have a proper website)Jeff, 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**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

Apologies for the delay, the lost podcast has been returned and is ready for release.'Don't Waste Buildings' should be a straightforward proposition. It seems obvious. Especially so in the face of the climate crisis. Unfortunately, the business of the built environment is not yet on board completely. Our guests for this episode are the founders of UK-based campaign group Don't Waste Buildings, Will Hurst (Architects Journal) Leanne Tritton (Ing Media), and Richard Nelson (Abyss Global).They're a group who are seeking to remedy this challenge by pressuring government and persuading business to both do better. They're doing some really interesting work and they're new, so they need support.Please note: the graphic we refer can be found here (about 15 minutes in). I'll update this reference with a link to the Passive House Plus article once it's published. Notes from the showDon't Waste Buildings on LinkedIn (the best starting point)The Don't Waste Buildings holding page (a proper website is imminent, so keep an eye on www.dontwastebuildings.com)Will Hurst on LinkedInLeanne Tritton on LinkedInRichard Nelson on LinkedInZero Ambitions - Construction's embodied carbon problem: how do we incentivise retrofit over 'demolish and rebuild', with Joseph Kilroy (CIOB)The AJ article by Kunle Barker that Will refers to: Without architects’ close expert involvement, government plans to retrofit millions of homes will be prone to unintended consequences such as mouldSomething about that 'burning fossil fuels to save the planet' nonsense that Jeff was referring to Future Energy Scenarios 2023 Released, sadly he couldn't find the actual article he rememberedHe found this as well: Ability of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) to generate negative emissionsThe Indy Johar LinkedIn post that Will refers toLRB's James Butler article about Grenfell: ‘This much evidence, still no charges’**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 page (we still don't have a proper website)Jeff, 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**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

This week we're speaking with Steven Heath, technical director at Knauf Insulation (UK and Ireland) and a really interesting and experienced person in the sector.So while we had him, we ran through a bunch of our favourite hoary subjects: measuring performance, performance guarantees, and what we think about EPCs.Knauf is a firm that's done some really interesting work in all of these areas and has even managed to make headway with the UK state in getting them to think about the value of testing performance, with EPCs and whatever SHDF is called now (the state-driven money tap for decarbonising social housing).Notes from the showSteven Heath on LinkedInKnauf Insulation's websiteThe ZAP episode with Kate Crawford about HTC and the 'snug factor': A new way to measure performance, negative energy use, and learning from disaster zones, with Kate Crawford (KLH Sustainability)**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 page (we still don't have a proper website)Jeff, 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**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

A long-overdue episode with friend of the show, Lloyd Alter, about a blog he wrote and his book "The Story of Upfront Carbon". We get into the language of sustainability, carbon, and lots of the words that are ubiquitous in this space (sustainability and the built environment, obviously).We get into the sustainability of travel, to some extent too,Lloyd's book: The Story of Upfront Carbon: How a Life of Just Enough Offers a Way Out of the Climate CrisisBuy it from the independent bookshop website (you can switch regions)You can also buy it from Amazon, but only if you really have no other optionInnovateUK – Net Zero Heat Open DayA showcase of IUK innovation lab projects including Transform-ERThursday 3rd October, online, 9am-12pmRegister here Notes from the show"Sustainable design is dead, long live regenerative design!" from Lloyd's Substack, Upfront CarbonA sustainable architecture Google Images search A regenerative architecture Google Images search That absurd vertical forest building in MilanCOP26: Sufficiency Should be First - Yamina SahebWe Have to Put Sufficiency First in a Low-Carbon World - Lloyd's old Treehugger blog about the SER frameworkZAP episode 144 - “Use less stuff”: embodied carbon, value chains, and the potential for change in the Declaration de Chaillot. With Lloyd Alter (Carbon Upfront), Kelly Alvarez Doran (Ha/f Climate Design), and Will Arnold (The Institution of Structural Engineers)**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 page (we still don't have a proper website)Jeff, 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**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

A wise woman once said: "sustainability is the doing, ESG is the talking about it".Today an Irish house-building giant has made a major move on Passive House — publishing a positioning paper and announcing the ongoing construction of over 1,700 homes to the standard.Joining us to talk about this are Nicola Cronin (Senior Sustainability Analyst) and Stephen O'Shea (Head of Sustainable Construction and ESG Reporting).Rather than this being another episode about Passive House we're more concerned with why a massive housebuilder has chosen to build to the standard. In this case, the answer highlights the positive impact that corporate reporting – in this case ESG – can have on the practice of construction. Where we've often derided ESG factors as a corporate fig leaf, in this instance ESG factors have driven institutional change. Most importantly, the scale of this change clearly illustrates the massive impact that big developers can have. If they choose to try.In short, we're talking about how change is made and why change is made.Links are below.Notes from the showNicola Cronin on LinkedInStephen O'Shea on LinkedInCairn Homes' Passive House positioning paperCairn on LinkedInCairn Homes' 2023 sustainability report**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 page (we still don't have a proper website)Jeff, 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**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

Jeff invited Mhairi Grant, co founder of award-winning architectural practice Paper Igloo, to join us to talk about the challenges of ensuring that one's ideas for sustainable design actually make their way through to the construction phase.The subject was sparked by a conversation she and Jeff had about lessons learned from a flawed project (that we discuss) and what it takes to ensure that our best, or even just easiest ideas are delivered upon in the build phase. Usually, we'd think about specifying a project in a way that can resist value engineering, but sometimes the project can be scuppered by something as simple as an easily avoidable comprehension issue.Notes from the showMhairi Grant on LinkedInA link to Scotland's Passivhaus Consultation: Building Regulations: Determining the principles for a Scottish equivalent to the Passivhaus standard: Stage 1 consultationThe Paper Igloo websitePaper Igloo on InstagramThe Passive House Plus feature on Mhairi's own home in Stirlingshire **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 page (we still don't have a proper website)Jeff, 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**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

Why is making UK homes more efficient so difficult? So asked journalist Leyla Boulton earlier this year in the pages of the Financial Times. Seeing a retrofit article in the FT piqued our interest, even more so once we realised Leyla is a senior editor with an esteemed background in political and environmental reporting. She was reporting on Kyoto where no one cared.Since beginning her retrofit journey Leyla has become a campaigner and it's this that you'll hear as we discuss the mainstreaming retrofit for the able-to-pay market, an endeavour borne of her experiences delving into the retrofit sector motivated by efforts to make her own home more energy efficient. Typically we talk about the barriers to take up, a desperately unhelpful planning bureaucracy, poorly designed institutional support, hamstrung local authorities and councils, and the need to do better in designing a system that works.Do check Leyla's article if you can. In spite of the broad air of dismay at how difficult things are, she describes meeting lots of helpful and enthusiastic people who were hamstrung in their efforts.Notes from the showLeyla Boulton on LinkedInFive Lessons from a Neighbourhood Campaign (FT, December 2023) - a free-to-read article in the FT on Leyla's campaign (the others are paywalled)Why is making UK homes more efficient so difficult? (FT, April 2024) The More in Common research at E3G webinar and slides (July 2024)Planning reform for retrofit of listed and conservation area homes - the public-facing report on our Green Conservation campaign's meeting of councils to share best practice on planning reform for retrofit (June 18 2024)Leyla and Anne-Marie Huby's Green Conservation campaign website The Transform-ER project video on the plan to design a system that enables the retrofit sector to scale and upgrade one million homes a year by 2030 (Transform-ER stands for 'Transform. Engage. Retrofit.') Chris Procter's Climate Emergency Conservation Area Toolkit (direct DL link here)**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 page (we still don't have a proper website)Jeff, 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**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

In the UK every day the construction industry produces enough waste to fill a football stadium. Rightly, former guest, Chris Clarke (SCAPE) has got a bee in his bonnet about construction waste and is making efforts to draw attention to the issue. He's not just concerned with the profligate use of resources and the impact on carbon emissions, it's the lackadaisical nature of the waste itself. Waste management accounts for £1.5BN of construction spending every year. In an industry that's operating on margins so tight that any kind of change can be seen to be prohibitively risky, it seems absurd that such a significant amount of waste is priced into every single large-scale project.But, while waste, accounting, reuse, circularity, and MMC are all concepts that have an important part to play, but most important is the front-end work that can be done to reduce waste at the point of design. Whichever way we look at it, when we're asked where we might find the money to drive the circular economy or reduce emissions, it would seem that there might be a simple answer. Even if the solution itself isn't so simple. If we're hoping for infrastructure changes that will make a significant contribution to net-zero efforts and generate revenue, it looks like we might have an easy-ish mark.Notes from the showChris Clarke on LinkedIn (chrisc@scape.co.uk)Construction Waste Portal websiteSCAPE's approach to sustainability  SCAPE - Building for Public Good: A Charter for Change - a policy/lobbying piece produced for the new UK governmentThat Danish development with the recycled brick slips in Architect's JournalWe Build Eco in the pages of Passive House PlusChris's last appearance on Zero AmbitionsInnovate UK's Circular Economy Innovation Network **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 page (we still don't have a proper website)Jeff, 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**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

Something-like twelve months on from inception we thought we'd catch up with what's happening at Living Places, the multi-disciplinary, impact-focused consultancy co-founded by this week's guest Cat Magill.Where last year Rufus Grantham came on the podcast to tell us all about the organisation he was in the midst of founding, this year Cat joined us to tell us about what they've been up to.There was plenty to talk about, but in short, the finance part isn’t that easy. However, they're making progress and figuring out how to make it happen, and Cat tells us all about it.Notes from the showCat Magill on LinkedIn Living Places websiteThe West Midlands Combined Authority's outcome funding report: Creating a market for place-based outcomesResearch about conversations with your neighbours: Do you listen to your neighbour? The role of block leaders in community-led energy retrofitsThe official evaluation paper about the first social housing decarbonisation demonstrator in which none of the projects delivered to schedule: Whole House Retrofit (WHR) and Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund Demonstrator (SHDF(D))Here’s an article from Inside Housing about the same thing: Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund: majority of councils failed to retrofit single home by deadlineAccelerating Net Zero Delivery, the UKRI paper that we refer to as being authored by PwC and Andrew Sudman (there were more authors)And some academic research that followed up on it: Climate policy as social policy? A comprehensive assessment of the economic impact of climate action in the UKLast year's episode with RufusDan's presentation about the Energiesprong Comfort Plan retrofit research on YouTube **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 page (we still don't have a website)Jeff, 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**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**