Net zero neighbourhoods and financing change, with Cat Magill (Living Places)

Something-like twelve months on from inception we thought we'd catch up with what's happening at Living Places, the multi-disciplinary, impact-focused consultancy co-founded by this week's guest Cat Magill.

Where last year Rufus Grantham came on the podcast to tell us all about the organisation he was in the midst of founding, this year Cat joined us to tell us about what they've been up to.

There was plenty to talk about, but in short, the finance part isn’t that easy. However, they're making progress and figuring out how to make it happen, and Cat tells us all about it.


Notes from the show

• Cat Magill on LinkedIn 
• Living Places website
• The West Midlands Combined Authority's outcome funding report: Creating a market for place-based outcomes
• Research about conversations with your neighbours: Do you listen to your neighbour? The role of block leaders in community-led energy retrofits
• The official evaluation paper about the first social housing decarbonisation demonstrator in which none of the projects delivered to schedule: Whole House Retrofit (WHR) and Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund Demonstrator (SHDF(D))
• Here’s an article from Inside Housing about the same thing: Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund: majority of councils failed to retrofit single home by deadline
• Accelerating Net Zero Delivery, the UKRI paper that we refer to as being authored by PwC and Andrew Sudman (there were more authors)
• And some academic research that followed up on it: Climate policy as social policy? A comprehensive assessment of the economic impact of climate action in the UK
• Last year's episode with Rufus
• Dan's presentation about the Energiesprong Comfort Plan retrofit research on YouTube

 

**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 (we still don't have a website)
• 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

**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