News Desk

Must listen: Zero Ambitions Podcast

Over the past two years Passive House Plus editor Jeff Colley has been moonlighting as co-host of Zero Ambitions, a weekly podcast that wrestles with the challenge of how to deliver the scale and ambition of decarbonisation and sustainability in buildings required to avoid a hellish future.

This article was originally published in issue 44 of Passive House Plus magazine. Want immediate access to all back issues and exclusive extra content? Click here to subscribe for as little as €15, or click here to receive the next issue free of charge

The focus is very much on keeping listeners engaged and informed – with a necessary dose of gallows humour.

Jeff’s co-hosts are user experience experts Alex Blondin and Dan Hyde (co-founder of Passive House Plus’s progenitor, Construct Ireland), who help to ensure the podcast couches the technical minutiae that Jeff loves in a manner that might chime with different kinds of users – designers, tradespeople, policymakers and building users.

Some recent highlights:

  • Learning from our mistakes: looking back at ten retrofits, ten years later, with retrofit pioneer Marion Baeli (PDP, Passivhaus Trust)
  • Systems design for passive houses, radon research as a proxy for ventilation, and some further education. With Dr. Barry McCarron (PHAI, CREST)
  • Passive house can lead to more than just houses: community engagement, control pathologies, and propagating systemic change. With Helena Fitzgerald (Department of Economics at the University of Limerick)
  • Unconventional approaches to space heating: infra-red, ceramics, and the necessity for good design. With John Morehead (Wain Morehead Architects)
  • EPCs are just a ritual (pt. 1): fundamental flaws in how we assess energy performance and how we got here, with Adrian Leaman and Bill Bordass (UsableBuildings.co.uk)
  • Retrofit, energy ratings, and improving Europe's energy performance, with Ciarán Cuffe MEP

The podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts. But you can find all ninety-five episodes here.

 

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