Accelerate to Zero

This week Tony Gordon, Superglass joins Sam Patterson to discuss a popular insulation material in new build homes and retrofit, how it is made from recycled materials, and how we can give industry a clearer view to achieve retrofit at scale. Superglass is a leading manufacturer of glass mineral wool insulation, offering thermal and acoustic products for all relevant applications.  Their product is...

Joining Sam Patterson this week on the Accelerate to Zero podcast is Sam Baumber, COO and co-founder of IndiNature. Edinburgh-based firm IndiNature creates products using the natural fibre hemp - a plant that can sequester 8-20 tonnes of carbon per hectare every year. Listen as the Sams go over why IndiNature makes products from hemp, the fire and general performance of the material and how we can...

The sustainable material takeover continues this week as Sam Patterson sits down with John Ferguson, Founder & CEO, Sisaltech. Sisaltech Ltd is the first manufacturer to combine sisal and wool to make insulation. John Ferguson shares his journey as a smaller company creating a new construction material that is circular, sustainable and recyclable.

In this season, Sara Edmonds hands over the Accelerate to Zero mic to Sam Patterson, Associate Impact Manager (Sustainability) at BE-ST. Sam's first guest is Ankita Dwivedi, Founder and CEO of  Firstplanit . Listen in to hear why Ankita has spent so many years to building Firstplanit, what it does, and how it is helping people to make informed and considered choices.

This week’s podcast is not only a great session with HomeNotes, but also the launch of something really exciting. HomeNotes is an organisation who is seeking to fill the gap that homeowners often face when undertaking a refurbishment project when they can’t afford the full suite of professional services to guide them through contractual matters on site, or navigating the supply chain, and so on. W...

Lisa is a retrofit coordinator, and Technical Lead at RetrofitWorks - a cooperative of retrofit installers and designers. She has an academic background in building physics and Architecture, and has conducted a range of performance evaluations of new, retrofit and refurbished buildings. She uses building forensics as part of an evidence-based approach to low-energy design and reducing the technica...

This week the Accelerate to Zero podcast features an interview with BE-ST’s very own Sarah Buchanan, Impact Manager in the Retrofit team. Not only does Sarah have an extensive knowledge of the retrofit space, but she also has taken on her own retrofit project of her home. She is an active member of Loco Home Retrofit, an organisation providing quality advice and whole house retrofit assessments, a...

This week Sara is joined by Sarah and Michael Lewis. Both are involved in the built environment – Sarah is the Director of Policy and Research at the Passivhaus Trust and Michael is a Teaching Fellow in architectural design at Edinburgh College of Art. They shared a really detailed history of the retrofit of their home, and we focused a lot on important things such as indoor air quality, the state...

Sal Wilson is an educator, architect, and passionate sustainability advocate. Sal teaches at  The Bartlett, UCL’s Faculty of the Built Environment  and the  Architectural Association School of Architecture . She has worked across architectural and environmental design practices, including  Atelier 10 . She is co-founder of  Home Energy Action Lab . But Sal has also undertaken her own retrofit proj...

Tara Gbolade is an architect and Passivhaus designer and cofounder of Gbolade Design Studio. In this episode we talk all things sustainability in practice. Tara was generous and brave in this discussion. We spoke about how none of us are perfect and that we learn and iterate as we go. This is exactly the sort of example we need to be leading with – letting it be known that we all have to start som...

We’ve been long time fans of Marion Baeli’s work here at BE-ST. Marion is partner at PDP London, an architect and Passivhaus designer with a passion for sustainability and low energy design. This led Marion to take part and win a contract as part of a government competition, Retrofit for the Future, which in turn led to the delivery of the award winning 100 Princedale Road project, the first certi...

This week, we bring you an extra bonus episode where Sara speaks to Jonathan Atkinson of Carbon Coop and People Powered Retrofit fame. It was a real joy, and Jonathan shared his extensive insight about the public and third sector and the world of the cooperative approach. Check out their work here , also check out People Powered Retrofit , B4Box and also mentioned was the Community Green Deal repo...

What a way to finish this series on place-based community focused retrofit initiatives! This week we had the pleasure of speaking to Aneaka Kellay from Carbon Co-op in Manchester, an energy services and advocacy cooperative that helps people and communities to make the radical reductions in home carbon emissions. Aneaka works in the Retrofit Team and Energy Commons Team. She is experienced in work...

Loco Home Retrofit is a Community Interest Company focused on owner occupier retrofit, Loco HomeRetrofit support energy conscious home improvement in Glasgow. Key to their work, is participating in collaborative initiatives to aggregate demand and ensure high quality outcomes and a risk managed retrofit offer to households. Find out more here: https://locohome.coop/ Better still, become a member....

In this week's episode, we explore the growing movement of community-driven initiatives and their impact on local communities. Against the backdrop of social and economic challenges, we speak with Homebaked CLT, a community land trust in Liverpool bringing about change for the better in their community. Both residents, they’ve been working in Anfield and Everton for over 12 years now. They talk ab...

Retrofit is a complex area. And making the ideas around it meaningful for people is an area that has been underserved for a long time. But here’s a way to approach it. Civic Square is a public square, neighbourhood lab, and creative and participatory platform focused on regenerative civic and social infrastructure. We spoke with Magda Petford, Dream Matter Designer, and Charlotte Bailey, Dream Mat...

This week we hear from Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn, two artists in London, driven by a desire to bring about change in their community. Hilary and Dan's project POWER  is a ‘show and do’ project building a solar power station across the rooftops of their street in Walthamstow, London through enacting a grassroots Green New Deal – working with art and infrastructure to tackle the interlinked cli...

There is a movement building in communities across the UK in response to a deep need for improving our homes. This series we are taking a look at inspiring examples of community driven and place based retrofit initiatives. In this episode Sara, part of the retrofit team at BE-ST, hears from John Christophers, an architect and passionate retrofit and social justice advocate, all about Retrofit Bals...

Construction underpins society. Skills underpin construction. According to Skills Development Scotland, developing construction skills is at the heart of new major changes – it is front and centre in getting us to a net zero society. Hear two sides of the story from Government and industry, Elaine Ellis of Skills Development Scotland and Jennifer Finn of AC Whyte, discuss action, implementation an...

The built environment is facing unprecedented challenges: Brexit, Covid-19 and climate change.   In the next instalment of the Built Environment Innovation Podcast we hear from CSIC’s new Chairman of the Board – Andy Outram, Lead Real Estate Director for Scotland at Turner & Townsend – as he sits down with Stephen to grapple with these challenges and help lead us into a new era through di...

Hear from Russell Smith, Managing Director of Parity Projects, and David Peerpoint, CEO of the Retrofit Academy, as they discuss the retrofit challenge with Stephen.  Dubbed ‘the greatest challenge of our age’, our guests explore how we can turn this challenge into opportunity and find viable methods to move forward in reaching a decarbonised housing stock by 2050.

A conversation with Alex MacLaren of Team ESTEEM, a student team participating in the Solar Decathlon Middle East, the world’s largest design and construction competition. Their aim is to build an innovative house of the future powered exclusively with solar energy and using Scottish homegrown mass timber and they are manufacturing the timber panels in our own Innovation Factory. Recorded from the...

At CSIC we aim to supercharge culture change in the built environment and help build an industry that represents our society.  In this episode we sit down with key change makers in this space: Emily Carr, Kier Construction, Douglas Morrison, CSIC, and Anne Johnstone, Fair Futures Partnership. 

To celebrate Scottish Apprenticeships Week we hear from apprentices Emily and Hannah, and Director Neil Sutherland from Makar on the changing face of apprenticeships and the key role they play. View the episode with video here

In this first episode, CSIC CEO Stephen Good is joined by John Forster to bring you insights into innovation in the built environment. John Forster has founded 3 successful construction businesses as founder of the Forster Group, is one of the founders of the CSIC's Governance board, the former Chairperson of CSIC and sits in the Solar Trade Association in Scotland. He also opened the first roofin...