020: Katrin Klingenberg on high-performance passive building

Find Your Sustain Ability

“Find Your Sustain Ability” host Laura England, associate director of App State’s Quality Enhancement Plan (“Pathways to Resilience”) and practitioner-in-residence in the Department of Sustainable Development, talks with 2024 Appalachian Energy Summit keynote speaker Katrin Klingenberg, co-founder and executive director of the nonprofit Phius (Passive House Institute U.S.). Klingenberg shares her journey from working for a corporate architecture firm to developing a passion for passive building — which led her to build the nation’s first passive house. Passive building uses core building principles to create net-zero structures that utilize clean, renewable energy sources to generate as much or more energy than they consume annually. Phius aims to decarbonize the built environment by making high-performance passive building the mainstream market standard.

Transcript:

Laura England

Welcome back to the Find Your Sustainability podcast. I'm Laura England from the Department of Sustainable Development, and I'm serving as associate director for the Pathways to Resilience Quality Enhancement Plan. And today, I have the pleasure of getting to talk with the keynote speaker for App State's 2024 Appalachian Energy Summit. Architect Katrin Klingberg, or Kat as well call her today is co-founder and executive director of the nonprofit organization Phius, which stands for passive house institute US, and is dedicated to decarbonizing the built environment by making high performance, passive building the mainstream market standard. Over the past 20 years, Kat's visionary leadership in this field has driven the development and adoption of passive building and zero energy standards. Passive building methodology originated in the US and Canada in the 1970s, and was enhanced in Germany in the 1990s. Kat reinvigorated it in 2003, when she designed and completed the first home to meet passive house standards in the United States. The interest that followed ultimately led her to found Phius, the organization she continues to lead today. Kat's work with Phius includes developing and delivering building science based training in how to design and build the energy efficient zero energy buildings. She has collaborated with federal and state government agencies to tailor passive building standards for various climate zones, and has consulted on projects nationally and internationally. She has also contributed to the field of sustainable building through articles, book contributions and presentations in the U.S. and abroad, and has been recognized for her leadership with numerous awards. Kat, we're thrilled to have you visit APS state and I thoroughly enjoyed your keynote talk last night at this year's Energy Summit. So for those who weren't there, can you start by telling us in layperson terms what is passive building and what is zero energy building? And why are these approaches so important in the context of climate change?

Kat Klingenberg

Well, first of all, let me thank you for having me. This is like, super exciting. I'm really glad I can be here and talk to you about my passion and kind of like life's work that I kind of have been dedicating my career to passive building and passive house. So passive house initially started, as you might imagine, as a house, as a single family design where people tried to create a building shell out of materials that would be very well insulating. It's almost like you're putting on a big jacket and then it traditionally came out of the colder climates, and by putting on a jacket and by making the building less drafty, they actually created a home that could be heated just by the internal heat gains in the building that I already present, like you dog or like your water heater or so. Very cool. Right? So that was the ideal in the 70s that you could create this equilibrium in a building where the internal gains are, the same as the losses. And we do that by applying passive building principles. And there again, nothing, no rocket science. It’s pretty intuitive. You put on a big down jacket in a cold climate. You put on a little less thick down jacket in a warmer climate, like, the San Francisco down jacket, you know, so you have the 006 North Face coat, and then you have the lighter one that you take on, like maybe chillier summer travel nights. Same idea. So yeah, that's pretty intuitive, actually. super comfortable. I'm so glad that I got to live an experience that, as you mentioned, I built my own house in 2002. That started off this interest in the whole thing, like proof of concept, really. It was the first passive home in the United States. And I've, I've lived through many winters in Urbana, Illinois. When the blizzard hits, it gets really, really cold in the Midwest and then the temperatures after the blizzard are like -20 F.

Laura England

Oh, wow.

Kat Klingenberg

So super, super cold when I'm in the house. and look out and it's sunny in the morning. Like, I have no idea. I'm walking around in a t- shirt because some solar, passive solar is part of the whole design process. So great, great, great resilient healthy homes.

Laura England

Well, that must have been really satisfying to have, you know, built the home and then to have it really demonstrate to you those passive principles in action.

Kat Klingenberg

You have no idea what kind of a smile I had on my face, like, yeah, this is working. And then you open the door and you poke your nose out and like, nope. Stay inside today.

Laura England

Stay in my toasty home. Yeah. Well. And then what is a zero energy building then?

Kat Klingenberg

So yeah. So what I just talked about is essentially like, the passive elements that, that you can use, like super insulation, like you make the home less drafty, you take windows that are very high performing and that let, based on climate, the right amount of solar. And because like in the warm climates, again, it works too. But at that point you want to keep the solar out, right? Like otherwise you get really hot in your building. So once you do all that and you optimize the envelope to reach this equilibrium where the internal heat gains and the losses of the envelope, or they almost balance out and you can get away with a very, very tiny mechanical system, which makes everything cheaper and easier, then you switch over to renewables and the system that you now need to get to zero energy for operation is super tiny. So, my house is pretty modest, right? Like, it's a 1500 square foot home, not giant. But that doesn't mean that you cannot do the same thing in a bigger home. But what I'm saying is, like so my footprint, it's a two story home, like my footprint is about 600ft². and maybe a little bigger. And, the PV system that covers all the energy that is still left after I did all these efficiency measures, after I put those in place, is about half the size of the roof. It’s really, really small. And it over produces 10,000 electric car miles. So, I'm completely independent. I'm overproducing. My bill is just the connection to the grid because I'm still interconnected. I'm not my own microgrid or anything. I don't have any storage. I stayed away from this 20 years ago because I felt that was too complicated. I'm thinking about it now just as backup. Like, I still haven't made my choice in terms of, like, electric car, but there are some really, really cool, like small home energy management systems now that are inverters that are like home management systems that decide when to keep energy like in the battery, when to send it back to the grid. Unfortunately, in Illinois we don't have that. But like in states like California where they actually pay you based on like peak consumption, the utility actually loves that when you're a micro producer and they get in a into a pinch, and too many people are drawing energy from the grid, at that point, they pay you big bucks to send like another kilowatt hour their way. Yeah. And so we talked about this last night. So once you have these like super energy efficient building shells, then you add a very small now affordable renewable system to it, which easily gets you to now overproduce. And then you can start trading with the utility if the the utility recognizes the value to them to shave off peak demand, then they don't have to build as many peaker plants and the peaker plants only run 2% of the year because like those peak moments don't last very long and they are super expensive to the utility. So once we put all these pieces together, and that was my main point yesterday, that actually buildings are really the cornerstone of this redesign of our energy supply as part of a renewable grid. And back to your second part of the question: Like, why is this all so important, in the context of climate change and resilience? Because, well, hey, 20, 30, 40 years ago, maybe we could have been talking about only mitigation, but now, we are a little late in the game. And we also need to talk about adaptation. And that's the great thing. Like these buildings, even if the grid goes down, they still have a small backup battery. We have a great story from some of you might remember the cold spell in Texas when a lot of people, like, actually died because it was too cold and the grid went down and…

Laura England

They weren't prepared.

Kat Klingenberg

They weren't prepared. They started burning furniture and like, things that you really shouldn't be doing, like, and then endangering themselves.

Laura England

Right… fumes, I imagine.

Kat Klingenberg

Right. So, a home that was retrofitted to our Phius standards in Austin, Texas, had no problem. They stayed in the home the entire week. They could have stayed there. They had not forethought enough. It was a fairly new home. They hadn't installed a small backup system yet, like a small battery. So they had a small baby. And so the limiting factor was the fridge no longer working. And they had to get baby food. So that's when they left the home. But if they had had that backup battery, no problem. Right. Like, so you put enough of a battery in to keep your critical loads going? No problem.

Laura England

So very cool. And this point that you're making last night is becoming even more clear for me now that there are synergies between transformation of the built environment and transformation of our energy systems. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has called for rapid, far reaching transformations across all sectors. Right? And I'm hearing like on the homeowner individual scale, like it's more affordable to put the photovoltaic solar array on your roof. If you've done the passive building work to really, really reduce your energy demand, it makes it then affordable. And that's a big obstacle for a lot of people. The cost of putting a solar array on your roof to meet the current level of energy use is prohibitive, but these two things are really synergistic.

Kat Klingenberg

Totally. So this is so cool, right? Like so if you have a regular standard home, it uses so much energy like you will have to have your roof is not even going to be enough. You will have to have photovoltaic panels in your yard and all of a sudden you pay like 40 K for like a system or 50 or whatever. And that's crazy. Nobody can afford the so with the incentives, the federal incentives. In Illinois, I was able to purchase my little itty bitty like five kW, solar system for I think in the end it cost me like 6k.

Laura England

Oh, wow. Huge difference.

Kat Klingenberg

And for that I pay off. I literally have no energy except the ten bucks that I'm being charged to...

Laura England

To be connected?

Kat Klingenberg

To be connected. And theoretically, once I have my electric car, I'm not paying any gas anymore, you know? So for 6k….

Laura England

Pays for itself.

Kat Klingenberg

…for like the next, I don't know, whatever. So all good.

Laura England

Yeah. Well, so. And last night you talked a lot about the various other benefits of passive building besides the energy reduction and what that means for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the cost savings by reducing energy demand. Can you talk about some of those other benefits?

Kat Klingenberg

Yeah, totally. I mean, it's like a total win win win on all levels, right? So by applying these passive principles, essentially what we're well it’s not accidentally like it's intentional, but we're making the thermal comfort much better in buildings like, most of us are probably used to very drafty, noisy homes that are not very comfortable, that don't have very good indoor air quality if your live in a humid climate. It's probably really humid in the summer. You have to run your air conditioning a lot to get the humidity out. So these passive principles help to improve all this to a level that is almost unbelievable. When people came into my home initially for tours, when I was trying to show it to the city council, they came in and one person came and said like, well, it's springtime and my allergies are killing me. Since I've been in this building, it almost has completely subsided. What is going on with this home? And I was like, well, thank you very much. That's the filtration system. And 24 seven, like fresh air ventilation and filtration. That's what you're feeling. So that's super cool. Surface temperatures like that. There's never a draft. There's never convection. And even the windows are so high performing that there's no draft next to full height windows.

Laura England

The comfort level is higher.

Kat Klingenberg

You can sit like it's it's it's it's really cold outside or warm for that matter. You can sit next to a full glass window, like on the windowsill and you're super comfortable. You don't, you don't, you don't feel it. And then, the quietness a lot of people refer to the quietness. The acoustic quality in these buildings is just unbelievable. And that makes a big difference in big cities. Right? So and then, they are safe too. So because they are so well built, inherently from the building science perspective, we’re preventing any kind of condition for potential mold growth in the wall. So, since the buildings are built so tight and the ventilation happens through intentional ports, there's no moist air that can get into the wall assembly. So there's no condensation inside of the wall assemblies not on the surface or inside and not inside. That's important. So that nothing deteriorates. So your building will last pretty much indefinitely.

Laura England

Oh wow.

Kat Klingenberg

I cut holes into my wall after 20 years and the material was as if I had just brought it back home from Home Depot yesterday.

Laura England

Oh, wow.

Kat Klingenberg

This is really, really cool. And then there's the affordability. Utility costs go down to nothing. If you add your PV, like your fuel cost and the affordability, that is really a big deal for developers, for campuses, affordable housing developers who actually hold their properties and, they can monetize the savings that are built into it. So through the passive measures, we we save so much like initial energy. And now, PV system is so powerful that it over produces and actually starts making us money. So the overall total cost benefit calculation looks fabulous.

Laura England

So what are some of the obstacles then? You know, this isn't yet the market standard. Your organization, Phius, is making a lot of headway. And you talked last night about the ways in which demand for your work is accelerating. I'd love to hear you talk about that. Those trends, what you think is behind them, and what are some of their remaining obstacles for sort of broad adoption and implementation of passive building principles?

Kat Klingenberg

Yeah. and we keep discovering those new obstacles. But that all said, we've come so far along already, like when when I first started in 2002 and three, my house was number one, right? And I was like, this is like slam dunk. This is a win win. It will take no time. And we'll see this exponential growth and it will become standard. So that was my vision for the nonprofit that I founded. Our mission statement was like, we want to make these standards code by 2020. Obviously, we didn't make that.

Laura England

In some places though. Right?

Kat Klingenberg

Well, that's just it. So I look back, I'm like, in 2020. Yeah, it actually has become code in some places, like for example, Mass, Massachusetts, they forged ahead and and they didn't just do this willy nilly. They built like eight projects and they studied the costs and they're like. And they analyzed what does it cost on top of regular construction. And they found it was roughly between 1 and 3%. And at that point, compared to the Massachusetts code, right? Like it's it's always you got to do this on a local basis, that calculation. So yeah. And at that point they just sprinted ahead like, yeah, we're going to do this. Well this is going to be the basis for a zero energy stretch code. And like in Mass a lot of municipalities adopted the stretch code ahead of time. In two years it's going to become law for everybody. And they're basically showing right now that this can be done on a broad level. So now back to your obstacles. Right. Like so, the buildings have grown from single family to multi-family. So that was a big growing period for us because we had to evolve from single family, home building kind of focus to like now to multifamily. And now we're also evolving into the commercial construction realm. So the principles apply across board. And we also are getting into retrofitting buildings using the same principles. The biggest issue that we're facing is really training up the workforce. if a project costs more than these like 1 to 3% and that's for multifamily, right? Like don't try this on a single family home. Single family homes are still more expensive. And we could talk more about this, but this goes beyond this podcast. so the workforce coordination is really key. And if you do this for the first time, even as an architect, it will take you more time training up the designers, the architect, the builders, the trades is so critical. If you right now go to contract and who's not familiar, it's not again, not rocket science. It's just like rethinking certain things and like redesigning your sequence of construction. It's really not that complicated. But people are resistant to change. And when they are faced with new technologies that they're not familiar with, they double the price, you know, so it's really important to train people, educate them across the board, like, create a spirit of integrated design. Ideally, everybody is at the table right from the beginning. Not like we've been doing this in the past. Like somebody designs something puts it out for bid. Somebody bids. It's all like everybody loves in their own little silos. And that just doesn't work because we are trying to tap into the synergies and not just between the technologies, the passive elements and the renewable elements and then the wider grid elements. Well, it's we're trying to tap into the synergies between the trades and everybody, all the players that are involved in making buildings happen.

Laura England

One thing related to that that might be, useful is that here at App State, building sciences and sustainable technology are in the same department. So those sort of trades fields are, you know, they're talking to one another in the academic setting and getting training across those different fields. So perhaps graduates of programs like ours are more prepared to do that talking across what has been siloed.

Kat Klingenberg

Yeah. And we actually have had an intern, from App State and she was awesome. She is at NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) now. And I had a secret mission, like coming here because I believe you guys, as you say, are perfectly positioned to actually spearhead that kind of integration in academia. And I've talked to some of your colleagues last night. I hope we can continue that conversation. We have a whole suite of trainings developed that is out in the market for the executive kind of group of professionals. But we've also been pushing our university version of it, and we're looking for university partners. So I'm very excited to continue that conversation with the respective departments of your school.

Laura England

That's excellent. And the timing is good. Since we have this five year climate literacy initiative that starts in just a few months in August of this year.

Kat Klingenberg

And you know what? The young generation, they're asking for it and the skills are not doing it. It’s crazy, right. Like so when I taught at University of Illinois that's already like what? Like, oh my God, I don't even know. It's like almost 15 years ago. I was teaching passive building and we had just gotten a new head of the department, and he wanted to turn a traditionally also building science based school into a design school. He saw that I made my students build, like, 1 to 1 models of, like, super insulated walls. They were exhibited at the final exhibit, and I got fired. My contract did not get extended. The students staged a sit-in in the dean's office and he kicked them out.

Laura England

Oh my goodness.

Kat Klingenberg

So the students were ready in 2005. No problem. Like hands down it was totally obvious. We have to do this, right? But the school…Schools move so slowly. It's, And failing. Failing the next generation.

Laura England

We have to do things differently here at App State. It does take time, but we have a lot of people, team of faculty, staff and students across campus who are working together. And, you know, speaking of students and their interest in being a part of solutions, you really are an agent of change in your field. Have been and a lot of our students are interested in being agents of change in their chosen professions and the work of Phius. I don't know if we made this clear earlier, but you're not doing the building of the homes and buildings, you're doing more design certification. You're working in ways that leverage larger change. and I'm sure that was intentional. And someone who has been an agent of change. Can you talk about that a little bit, thinking about ways of having that bigger, broader impact and any advice you may have for our students who see themselves again, going into a profession and really wanting to help implement the transformations that are needed.

Kat Klingenberg

Totally. So first to your point, I think it's really important that someone has this experience of practical experience. So I'm really glad that I was forced out of my corporate architecture career by myself. when I become part of the solution, right? I was working for Helmut Jahn, a really big, one of the best ten architecture firms, but I never had seen a piece of wood in any of my drawings. It was all steel and glass. And I'm like, I have to make a difference. I'm going to quit my job. I'm going to like, go out on my own, because then I have control and I started building my house. So knowing how these things go together in 3D as an architect, like, essentially becoming the design builder, I did all the structural calculations on my building and it’s still standing up really happy about this.

Laura England

It's actually.

Kat Klingenberg

I started designing my own systems, so I really had to think everything through. and with that base knowledge, then I felt like I had a good baseline to then start a business around it. Now, I chose the nonprofit route, but having done this for 20 years now and having built this business and as you say, like I started planning out a strategic change plan, like, what do we need to do to make this code? Like we need to talk to the policymakers. We need to teach people. So we need a curriculum. We need a really good standard that doesn't make people… that allows people to do this safely. And that brings them along. So we kept working, and it has been 20 years now, and this doesn't happen overnight. So to the students who want to be change agents, I would say, this is a firm belief of mine. I believe we've shown that environmental action can actually be profitable and that it is a win win for everybody. And now having been in the nonprofit world for so long, it's so funny. Like my vision for my next chapter is actually going into for profit because, what I want to inspire in like a global entrepreneurial world that that really is the fire we need to light next. I was talking to the chair of your economy department last night. We had this conversation, right? We're talking about the limits to growth. And he was funny enough. He was studying in London when that was a thing. 50 years later, they came out with this sequel, which is called Earth For All. I recommend for everybody to read this. You don't have to agree with everything, but that speaks to now if we think about like systems change, Pick you up your expertise. Start a business that leverages these synergies and then prove to the world that this is an economic driver and makes life better. It makes social communities better. I think we're really at that point where we're understanding these systems designs, even on a global level, and we need immediate action globally like pretty much yesterday. So let's just unlock this entrepreneurial spirit in students. Take it and run with it. And create a business.

Laura England

Great advice there. So hands on experience. You talked about basically strategic thinking strategic planning, thinking ahead to thinking systems thinking. What are the the outcomes we need to get to and then what are the strategies to get there. yeah.

Kat Klingenberg

So one more thing like, this is maybe a little off topic, but so what I'm really excited about in my field is like, I've started working with developers because I'm trying to light that fire under their butts, right? Like, come on, people like this is not just good for affordable housing developers. This is also really good for for profit developers. And here's why. So essentially, in my mind, it's like we have a housing crisis. We need housing. Housing is crazy expensive, no longer sustainable…nuts. So if we could start thinking about housing as infrastructure for decentralized energy production. So again, housing basically becomes the rig for your solar. And now the housing itself is so efficient that you can overproduce on a multifamily scale or like a city block, then you have a microgrid. You add all these efficiencies that we talked about during my presentation last night. So as a developer, you actually become like an energy company and housing is kind of like a side product. I have this vision that housing becomes free somehow.

Laura England

Everyone would love that.

Kat Klingenberg

So, well, negligible in terms of cost, because it has this other amazing benefit to developers and to society to make money.

Laura England

I love that vision.

Kat Klingenberg

Yeah, that's that's my…

Laura England

I am excited to see that spread.

Kat Klingenberg

That’s my next career, you know? I'm going to be an energy and housing developer.

Laura England

Well and what you just said you're embodying this strategic thinking/systems thinking like you have worked within a particular system. And that's part it's a subsystem of a bigger system. And Now you're probably thinking multiple systems ahead of the one.

Kat Klingenberg

And the next one is global, you know, so like, how can we take that model and take it to places like Africa for example right? Like, well, they haven't done too much like old bad stuff. So it's a clean slate. Like, let's get started right out of the gate on the right foot.

Laura England

Yeah. Well, speaking of different geographies, on like sort of a more practical question you talked about in cold climates, what it looks like for passive building here, the down jacket insulation being really key for the climates, like the Piedmont of the southeastern United States, where it's very hot in the summer and very humid. What are some of…like help us visualize like what are those building practices look like to get to zero energy or passive homes?

Kat Klingenberg

Yeah, it's also super exciting. So we have annual conferences every year to plant flags and different regions of the U.S, and the US is actually super interesting in terms of climate specific design. So this is like what I'm priding myself in having come up with the idea of climate specific passive building standards. We developed those, and wrote the papers and did the research and with NREL in 2015. So this past year we were in Houston, Texas, and we were a little nervous, like, will people take us up on this and think that this is a real thing? And they actually were. I think this was one of our best conferences. So, the principles exactly apply in hot and humid climates as well. It's the same thing. It's essentially best building science practices. It's just a different level of insulation. Like you still need a certain level of insulation. You definitely need the leak free construction because you don't want…you have the humidity. well, not so much in the southwest, but in the humid, hot and humid climates. Damn right. You need to control vapor. Problem number one. That's also a big contributor to your energy consumption if you have to dehumidify. So if you can ventilate right. And not just like crazy ventilate, because then you bring in all the humidity, then you don't have to like, use energy to take the humidity back out. The whole system's thinking again, like optimize for that particular climate. So it's exact same thing.

Laura England

So you have a set of levers and you just pull different ones, different amounts depending on the climate.

Kat Klingenberg

Exactly. That's exactly right. it's like little sliders, you know, you just like, kind of jigger it until it's perfect including cost, by the way. And that's the good news for the South. It's a delicate balance, but once you get it, and because you do not need that much insulation, and actually it's also more affordable. So if you're in a super cold climate, you can imagine you need a bigger down jacket. And if you go and buy a Canada goose jacket, this is like a real investment. If you go to San Francisco, like, all right, like, no problem. I can pull this thing at the airport out of a vending machine. So it's funny but it's a similar kind of relationship.

Laura England

Very cool. So, Kat, you've laid out a big vision and shared with us a lot about passive building. For our listeners who are everyday people, some might include folks working in the building industry, but you know, homeowners, future homeowners, etc. what is a good place to start. Tell us about where we can get information through your organization, Phius. But also like what would be a good starting point for someone who wants to move in this direction?

Kat Klingenberg

Yeah. So our website is great, maybe almost like a little bit too much information. So when I look for something specific, it's www.phius.org. It's sometimes hard to find. So please be patient. But there is a lot of awesome information on our website. It's all free. We've put together a whole bunch of calculators, so if you wanted to try to figure out how to build your own home, you actually could. You just have to do a whole bunch of reading. I do not recommend it because these homes are delicate designs, right? Like so at that point, a professional is a really good investment because if you try to figure it out yourself and you make one small mistake, then you might be ailing from that mistake, like for a long time. If you pay a professional upfront, you're good for the next 100 years. Essentially, that's the idea of the whole system. So but you could if you wanted to. And on our website you will also find information about training. So if you are in any of the fields that are relevant and you might want to like, consider a shift in focus, we have trainings for architects, for builders, for energy writers, anybody along the delivery chain of passive building. We also just recently launched our new trades training, which we were very excited about. So really the hands on stuff, how do I do this? How do I build like insulated slabs? And what's the airtight layer of vapor barrier like all these like technical terms for building science. And how do these things go together? What are the components? So really exciting stuff. We also have information about policies, about incentives on the website. Really good place to start. If you're in a profession and you're interested in, like taking the next step. Definitely. Training would be a good idea. And we have that infernal website and I will say, sign up for our newsletter because our team kicks out new information all the time. And it's a pretty fast moving field. Lots of exciting stuff happening all the time. At the end of this year, we're having three educational events coming up. This year we are together with Green Built, we have a dedicated track at Green Built for the Phius technologies and certifications and buildings. Very excited because the case we're trying to make is like these systems are synergistic. They are not like energy over here and green building over. They work together similarly with the living building challenge. Right. Like any other holistic green building program. Same thing we are the intel inside we are the energy optimization logic that you should plug into these other systems. And then we also have a Phius pro forum for the first time this year, which is especially dedicated to the professionals in Massachusetts who are now challenged on a large scale to basically reconfigure their entire business model to to crank out like, passive buildings. One after another. So we're trying to help them to come up to speed and feel more secure that they can actually do that. And then one little thing, I forgot to plug yesterday. and some of you students might, might hear me say it. Now, Joseph Lstiburek, in my opinion, one of the most relevant building scientists in like, North America and maybe globally, and he has a long-standing building science symposium every year. It's called Summer Camp. And they are always looking for young folks and new people to join because the older, more experienced building scientists, they are retiring. So we need to bring new young folks in. If you're interested in going to summer camp, let me know. Send an email to [e-mail] and that'll get to me. They are 75% full. It's the first week of August. It would be great to have a few young folks to show up for that conference as well.

Laura England

That sounds like a great opportunity. Well, thank you for the work that you do, Kat. Your organization is phenomenal in creating change, accelerating change. It's really inspirational. The last question that I'd love to ask, in the complexity and enormity of the climate problems that we face, what gives you hope or courage to keep doing this work that you're doing?

Kat Klingenberg

Well, about 20 years ago, when I first started, I was kind of bummed and I'm like, man, nobody's doing anything. Like I felt like I was on my soapbox all the time, like bugging people, like, I don't care if I bug people. I was like, we have to bug people. In the younger years, I was probably, maybe sometimes a little too forceful sometimes . I started yesterday, I, I learned my lesson, you know, like, you don't want to inflame this politicization of the climate debate. It has unfortunately been hijacked. So let's steer clear of that. What we're proposing here is something we all want. Right, Left. Doesn't matter. Like we can all agree we want safe, comfortable homes that are resilient. They keep our families safe.

Laura England

Absolutely.

Kat Klingenberg

And we want, like, affordability. We don't want to spend a fortune on energy. So, that solution, when it all clicked and when it all fell into place, and I saw the potential for this black swan event, like, really this exponential growth, like, wow, something that seemed so daunting 20 years ago and all of a sudden it's taken off in entire industries were struggling to make this change happen. So since then, really, I created a newsletter on LinkedIn and it's called, In the Catbird Seat on climate. And, that was my effort of kind of like switching my thinking from doom and gloom to like, no, we can actually do this. This is totally awesome. And it will make everything better. Now we just need to win the hearts and minds of the people and communicate like this is the win win. We all can agree on it, no matter left or right or whatever. What the disagreements are. This is actually our commonality. So the more people we can convince of that and inspire to follow in the footsteps of the better. So yes, I believe this is a really great idea and we can make it happen…and we can make it happen in time.

Laura England

Well said in that point that with climate mitigation strategies or climate solutions, there are so many co-benefits as they're called, these other benefits. If we focus on that instead of the controversial pieces…the parts that are uncontroversial, we have the possibility of making a whole lot of headway. So once again, thank you for the work that you do. Thank you for coming to App State and sharing with us about your work and for talking with me today.

Kat Klingenberg

Thank you so much.