A schism in building standards: promoting passive house and high performance building in the USA, with Zack Semke (Passive House Accelerator)

Zero Ambitions Podcast

Content provided by Dan Hyde. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Dan Hyde or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.

10M ago 1:12:24

MP3•Episode home

Lloyd Alter introduced us to Passive House Accelerator earlier this year and it turns out that we're doing some quite similar work, promoting high-performance building, sharing innovation, and elevating thought leadership.

Instead of starting a blood feud, we decided to invite Zack Semke onto the podcast to talk about what they're up to and see what we can learn from them. As it turns out, they're doing some really interesting stuff and Zack had already interviewed Jeff ages ago. Seems like we should look into collaborating.

We had a chat about their stateside perspective on high-performance building, how to make sense of the place of passive house globally, and the schism between PHI vs PHIUS standards(European vs US).

It went into a bunch of other things too. All fairly familiar subject matter, substantially less Brexit than usual but more naked culture war nonsense. Whatever we think about the nuance of the standards, it's clear that US adoption of passive house has massive potential to push things forward.

Notes from the show

Retrofit Reimagined
If you're nearby, go! More Retrofit Reimagined 2023 is happening in Bristol (6 October), Machynlleth (Centre for Alternative Technology, 21-22 October), and Glasgow (11 November).

**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.

Zero Ambitions Partners email address - zap@eiux.agency
Follow us on the Zero Ambitions LinkedIn page
Subscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)
Check Lloyd's Substack: Carbon Upfront
Join ACAN
Join the AECB
Join the IGBC
Check out Her Own Space, the renovation and retrofit platform for women (but not in a patronising way)
Email Alex and Dan about websites, branding, and communications - zap@eiux.agency; Everything is User Experience

**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

161 episodes