A new way to measure performance, negative energy use, and learning from disaster zones, with Kate Crawford (KLH Sustainability)

Kate Crawford is a building nerd who is obsessed with measuring performance. She's currently, Technical Director at KLH Sustainability, a multidisciplinary consultancy working in the built environment.

Kate has a very interesting background in terms of her experience and she's now working on a very fascinating project in which she's researching and developing a "Smart Meter Enabled Thermal Energy Rating (SMETER)" system that uses a new approach to measuring building performance and a different kind of metric for assessing it.

The result has been something that they call "the snug factor", which is the heat-transfer coefficient of the building (Kate explains it all in the episode). The way they generate their heat-transfer coefficient has led to incredibly accurate estimations for energy use in a home. 



Notes from the show

• Kate Crawford on LinkedIn
• KLH Sustainability's website
• The research Jeff mentions about low pressure showers using more water
• Real performance and the HEM
• Real performance and the SAP
• Kate's little (and excellent) graphic novel on her experience of aid work

**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
• Jeff, Alex, and Dan about websites, branding, and communications - [e-mail]; Everything is User Experience
• 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 patronizing way)

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

What is Zero Ambitions Podcast?

Zero Ambitions is a consultancy and weekly podcast about sustainability and the built environment.

We find interesting and experienced guests who know what they're talking about, usually to discuss how we navigate the complexity of decarbonisation and sustainability in the built environment and its many related sectors.

Hosted by Jeff Colley and Dan Hyde, publishers of Passive House Plus magazine (UK and Ireland), the podcast has now grow into a consultancy, Zero Ambitions Partners.

The consultancy specialises in defensible sustainability communications. We create the strategy that makes built environment leaders stand out, enabling them to occupy positions that are distinct and defensible.

As with the podcast itself, we help organisations to communicate about what they do and the value that they offer. Usually, this means strategies to change a conversation from price to value and how to futureproof an offer with evidence that makes its claims watertight.

If you're a leader, or want to become one, we help you to make sense of where you stand in your sector, how to improve your positioning, how to communicate this to the market you operate in, and how to highlight the difference between you and your peer group.

If you can engage your value chain by speaking about what matters to them, you can educate your key stakeholders and turn them into evangelists for your cause.

Book a ‘ZAP Defensibility Audit’, but brace yourself
- Uncover value and opportunities that you may 
not have recognised
- Find out if your sustainability claims are defensible
- Find out if your claims are too meek
- Change the conversation from price to value