Latest / Clean Power Hour / Passive House for Decarbonizing the Built Environment with Zach Semke |EP142

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Passive House for Decarbonizing the Built Environment with Zach Semke |EP142 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:50
  Zach Semke: I feel like there are very encouraging stories that that do need to be told. I mean, I think that's what the Passive House accelerator is all about is, is creating a place for people to come together and share lessons learned and, and and pitfalls to avoid and all that. How are
• 1:11
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• 1:25
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• 1:31
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• 1:39
  Tim Montague: Today on the clean power our passive house, what is it? What does it mean for decarbonizing the built environment? My guest today is Zemke. He is the director of the Passive house accelerator. I'm very excited to have this conversation. It's a homecoming for me, I did a lot of work with the Passive house industry about 10 years ago. And if you don't know about it, you're going to want to geek out on this it is super cool, super energy efficient technology and standards for the built environment. Check out all of our content at clean power hour.com Give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify so that others can find this content, please subscribe to our channel on YouTube. All of our content is on YouTube, and tell a friend about the show the Clean Power Hour wants to grow and achieve our mission of speeding the energy transition without I want to welcome Zach Sam key to the show. Welcome.
• 2:34
  Zach Semke: Thank you, Sam. It's so great to be here.
• 2:36
  Tim Montague: Zach is the director of the Passive house Accelerator, an organisation dedicated to spreading knowledge and information and resources for the Passive House community.
• 2:48
  Tim Montague: And ultimately, net zero or net negative technologies and standards. So thank you for your work. tell our listeners a little bit about yourself sack.
• 2:56
  Tim Montague: How did you get interested in the built environment and energy efficiency?
• 3:01
  Zach Semke: No, yeah, absolutely. Well, out of college a long time ago, I got involved in advocacy for progressive regional planning. So essentially looking at the urban, you know, the urban growth boundaries. This is in Portland, Oregon, urban growth boundaries, transportation reform, equitable access to affordable housing, basically how to create a sustainable, more sustainable city. So that was my first introduction to this, this world of the built environment. And in that, in that work, I saw firsthand there was sort of the importance of good design. So I was kind of introduced a little bit to the role that architecture and urban design can play in that in that because it's easy for nimbyism to, to work at cross purposes with creating a more, you know, honestly a little bit more of a dense neighbourhood kind of traditional neighbourhood as opposed to a sprawling neighbourhood. So, so that was sort of the first foray. And then I did Performing Arts for 11 years. So had a kind of a, a 180, or I don't know, a different different experience a different turn, and then went to school in grad school and landscape design. And just as the crash was happening the in the late 2000s, right 2008. And worked for a landscape architecture firm for a couple of years. And it was really interested in creating public spaces, you know, parks and that sort of thing. But all of all the work just dried up, and was casting about for what to do next, and got connected with a company called hammer in hand in Portland, Oregon, just as they were getting involved in Passive House. And so this was like 2009 2010. So this is just a couple of years before you started doing some consulting work, I think with theists right. So Sam Hagerman, that was one of the CO owners of hammer in hand, had just taken a course with Katrin clinic klinkenberg. In Seattle, it was a it was this kind of formative course for a whole bunch of Passive house practitioners here in the Northwest. So he just taking that course was really jazzed about Passive house he kind of thought of it as the unified field theory for him as a builder, bringing together all these sort of disparate pieces of knowledge into a system and started doing Passive house and so I ended up starting to like do kind of like science communication, about the building science learning the building science and and communicating and about that in the blog, in our blog and on video. And just got hooked and really just was so excited by the potential We'll have buildings to play a role in, in the clean energy transition in decarbonizing our economy, probably listeners, maybe listeners are aware that 40% of of greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings. So it's a big part of the problem. And Passive house is one of the avenues to make it a big part of the solution.
• 6:16
  Tim Montague: I have very fond memories of Sam, he was a, a thought leader. And, you know, he joined the board, I think of FIS. So he was very, very active in expanding their work. And, and, you know, he brought real street credibility, right, as a builder, to the table. You know, there's, there's levels, right, you have the, the, the academics, so to speak, right?
• 6:44
  Tim Montague: And architects who are, who are planning things, and designing things, but then there's the people who actually bring it out of the ground and make it real, and it takes a good integration.
• 6:57
  Tim Montague: And you know, what is what is the word it's when, when you when you bring it all together.
• 7:04
  Tim Montague: So, Sofia, Sofia, Sen and PHSI, the two big Passive house organisations are kind of parallel universes, but doing the same thing, basically, right training professionals to adopt these standards, which are, which is, you know, standards are unnecessary evil, we humans will, will do really dumb things if we don't have standards and codes to, to guide us, right.
• 7:28
  Tim Montague: But, so that's cool. And I remember seeing your talk, you gave a talk about a black swan or black swan events, at the Pittsburg conference for passive house that I attended in like 2013, or 2014, I want to say, and I was really blown away by that talk, to be honest, I really enjoyed it. I didn't even know about black swan events.
• 7:58
  Tim Montague: These are very rare, you know, rare events, but highly impactful for, for humanity.
• 8:02
  Tim Montague: And, you know, we're, we're seeing black swan events more and more. Because we're changing the environment, we have created something called the Anthropocene now, right? Humans now dominate the built environment of the natural world. And in our, in our Earth, the things we eat, like chickens, and pigs and cows far outweigh the biomass of other living things. Because we have so so capably taken over. And unfortunately, there's an ecological phenomenon called overshoot and collapse, which, if we're not careful, is going to really bite us in the butt. I don't know if there's any avoiding the collapse, when any population grows very quickly.
• 8:53
  Tim Montague: I'm an ecologist by training.
• 9:49
  Tim Montague: And this is a well known phenomenon in population ecology that you ride the rocket ship up, wolves on an island, full of deer and moose, the wolves just go to town, they grow. But then they run out of food, and they collapse. And we humans have done this with fossil fuels. And it's, I have nothing against fossil fuels, right? They gave us the modern life that we have, they gave us civilization, really. And now we just have to transition to better cleaner technologies and passive houses is vital in that regard. You mentioned communications, you're a podcaster like myself, that's how we came to this table is, you know, through podcasting it Why are you so passionate for communication and for podcasting now?
• 10:37
  Zach Semke: Well, I mean, we need to, we need to tell stories about how to get out of this mess that you just that you just rightly, you know, painted there. And, and I think, I feel like there are very encouraging stories that that do need to be told. I mean, I think that's what the Passive house accelerator is all about is, is creating a place for people to come together and share lessons learned and, and, and pitfalls to avoid and all that. So, so for me, I just, you know, I'm not a practitioner. I've never designed to Passive house I'm a certified Passive House consultant, but that was just so that I could really, you know, educate myself more deeply about about the building science and how all this comes together. So my, the contribution I can make is, is by is to, is to help be a You know, it bring out the stories of the people who are doing this work. And so that I think that, you know, the Black Swan piece just to take to go back to that a little bit is that black swans can describe both positive and negative events. And, and so on the climate crisis side, we see all sorts of potential tipping points and scary things, right.
• 12:07
  Zach Semke: But what struck me as I was learning, reading the book, black, The Black Swan by Nicholas Taleb, Nassim Taleb. I saw this, this depiction, this, the story of The Black Swan is essentially the story of the life of a turkey, right, which is like this wavering up line, upward line of Turkey getting, you know, happier and fatter over time. But the problem is for the turkey. Thanksgiving is a black swan event, like he never sees it, he or she never sees this, this, this event coming up. But that Thanksgiving comes and the axe comes down.
• 12:44
  Zach Semke: And the you know, this light this exists the system that the turkey figured they he understood, is completely disrupted and changed by this unforeseen event. And that's the Black Swan. And there are all these things in his history that like that, the fall of the Berlin Wall 911. You could argue that the election of Donald Trump all sorts of different black swan events, and certainly Lawson in climate change. When I read that book, saw that graph, and then I saw another graph that was of the cost of solar energy compared to fossil fuel energy. And so it's this graph that has fossil fuel energy over over the last decades, just, you know, kind of wavering is pretty much flatlined. And then this crashing from the sky, the cost of solar, plummeting, starting it, like it didn't even register on the graph, because it was so ridiculously expensive before, but then it completely plummets and becomes cost competitive with fossil fuel energy overnight. And that is, I think, one example of a black swan. And yes, I think changes everything.
• 13:54
  Zach Semke: It is
• 13:54
  Tim Montague: interesting that they can be good and bad, right.
• 13:56
  Tim Montague: And there usually is a double edge to everything like fossil fuels, the discovery of fossil fuels were a Black Swan, we didn't know that there was all this super rich energy just beneath the surface of the ground in the form of coal, oil and natural gas. And then all of a sudden, right. And it is I mean, it is a heyday. And it completely changes our future forever. Meanwhile, it also shoots ourselves in the foot, in many ways, the fallout from climate change, ocean acidification, rising sea levels, global warming, the atmosphere, the climate, getting warmer, weather extremes getting more great. And now disruption of food systems for humanity, that's going to be the big black guy that we don't really see here in North America yet so much. But in the in less developed places. There are many millions of people who are immigrating or migrating on mass. And when humans migrate on mass all hell breaks loose to wherever they're going to, because nobody likes it when a bunch of strangers show up on their doorstep. And generally, there's conflict. And that's no fun. But let's talk about passive house. What are the tenants of passive house for our listeners who don't know?
• 15:19
  Zach Semke: Yeah, so Passive house is a is a focus on making a better building. So really focusing on the quality of the building envelope. There are three key performance metrics for Passive house, whether in you mentioned that there is Passive house Institute, and there's fi s, there are these two different standards, and they have important differences.
• 15:39
  Zach Semke: But that what they share is are these three key metrics, and that is one, creating a building that has very low thermal energy demand. So very little energy required for heating, cooling.
• 15:53
  Zach Semke: Two is a building that has very little total energy demand. So you're also looking at, you know, plug loads and appliances.
• 16:02
  Zach Semke: And three is that it is pretty airtight. And that's something that's measured with a blower door test. And the reason for that is first and foremost, actually building durability, because the flow of moisture through or through flow of air rather, through building assembly, especially if it's well insulated, can be really dangerous. And because it brings it can bring tonnes and tonnes of moisture into assemblies and create building failure. So So airtightness is key for building durability but also for and it's also a really powerful energy efficiency measure. So those three those three things to come together Whether those three metrics are basically what Passive house is all about.
• 16:46
  Zach Semke: There are five classic design principles for Passive house that help achieve those, those three metrics. So, continuous insulation. And for actually, for larger buildings like multifamily building, the difference between a Passive house level of insulation and a conventional building insulation may not be that large, it can almost be similar to code sometimes. So but but the idea is that is continuous is wrapping, wrapping the entire building in a continuous way.
• 17:23
  Zach Semke: And there that there are no thermal bridges. And I think that this is a really a key insight for for passing that Passive house brings to the green building world is this focus on no thermal bridges. So thermal bridge is an element in a building that allows heat to bypass the thermal barrier of the continuous insulation. So you can think like the worst possible thermal bridge would be like a steel steel girder that's going through the building envelope, that sort of thing. So there's a lot of care at the design phase of, of just designing the building assembly is of the building envelope, the walls, the roof, the foundation, so there are no thermal bridges.
• 18:06
  Zach Semke: So we create thermal brakes to stop those thermal bridges.
• 18:11
  Zach Semke: That's the second of the five, then airtight construction. So that's that's really about just care in the assembly and some simple materials you can do, like you can do paper, paper, membrane or liquid applied membranes that they vary, there are lots of cool products to make that happen.
• 18:35
  Tim Montague: Turning the house or building into a balloon, basically, right? Keeping it very airtight,
• 18:40
  Zach Semke: right. That's right.
• 18:40
  Zach Semke: And then high performance windows and doors, because you've created this great this great envelope, and then you're, you're punching holes in it. So you want to make sure that that those windows and doors are doing a good job of continuing that air tightness and continuing the thermal qualities of the envelope. So great windows and doors. And they're operable, so don't worry, you can if you can always open these windows, right? Yep. And then the fifth one is fresh air with heat recovery. So it's and that so it's just a fresh air system that's running 24/7 that's balanced. So, the the, the same volume of air is coming in is is going out. And as the stale air is going out, it is transferring passively, it's heat energy back into the the intake air, or the fresh air. And so it's like having a window open in terms of fresh air. But there's basic, almost no loss in thermal energy. And the reverse is true in the summer, you can be passing that the cool into the into the fresh air that's coming in. And it's filtered, which is key for resilience. I think that's then that's one of the things I would love to touch on and,
• 20:01
  Tim Montague: and health, right, you want to filter out the dust and the pollen and other particulate pollutants. But now let's compare and contrast Passive house design to lead lead, a system developed by the US Green Building Council is much better known, historically right? And a much bigger organisation or body of professionals. So LEED was kind of the American predecessor. And then Passive house was developed in Germany, and then brought to the US by people like cat klinkenberg, who started fierce the Passive house Institute us who then developed a climate specific model for passive house, which was a break from her European brethren. So that's really the the dividing line between theists and PHSI was furious is going to have standards that are climate specific, not just one standard for any climate, which I think makes a lot of sense. But the Europeans didn't necessarily agree with that. So anyway, contrast lead for our listeners from Passive house. Just at a high level.
• 21:16
  Zach Semke: Yeah, absolutely. So LEED is a checklist based system where you you check a bunch of boxes and it's very, it's it's it's much broader scope. So it's looking at that connection. Like you get you can get points for for bike racks, for example, or for the plantings of in the landscape landscape. That's actually my first I became A long time ago became a LEED Accredited Professional when I was doing landscape design, and therefore, because at the time, I don't know what's what's tuition is there were four credits that you could get, depending on your strategy for capturing rainwater, and using native plants and that sort of thing. What else, they're also looking at recycled content of materials and toxicity, all sorts of lots of great stuff. So so we in I mean, we basically, I've often thought of LEED as being kind of the Brett representing the breath of green building. And Passive House is the depth on energy performance and health. And so they actually are complementary in many ways.
• 22:26
  Zach Semke: It's also true, though, as a, as a passive house person, I can't not say this, that there's a really strong correlation between Passive house modelling and actual energy performance.
• 22:41
  Zach Semke: And there is not the same kind of correlation for LEED projects. And so there are there. And that's, that's something that's come up a lot.
• 22:53
  Zach Semke: And you know, it's just this mismatch between expectations for the performance of the buildings, and poor performance later.
• 23:01
  Tim Montague: Yeah, like you could design a LEED building that would get a good lead score. Yeah, but not be very energy efficient, or not much more energy efficient than standard construction. And that's because as you pointed out, you can get points for so many things, the landscaping, the social aspect, having bike friendly, or, you know, access resources for your employees and so forth, are the residents.
• 23:25
  Zach Semke: Right? And it's also it's also because it's not, it's not looking at the ultimate performance as the driver. So So Passive House, it's not a it's not a checklist system, it's all about here are the metrics, if you hit these metrics, it's Passive house. If you don't hit these metrics, sorry, it's not and that has to do about the actual energy use your building's going to use, whereas LEED you can you can imagine, like, you could create this really crenellated, like, crazy form that is very inherently energy inefficient. But if you showed that you use energy efficient, or, you know, like better human equipment, and you applied more insulation on that form, you could get energy points for that. Whereas with Passive house, you go, No, we're not going to start with some crazy, crazy form, we actually have to look at the implications of, of our design choices, and what those mean for performance.
• 24:24
  Zach Semke: And so it's, it's just a different, it's a different mindset. And, and it it is resulting in real, real energy performance gains, which is why places like the city of Vancouver, used to point to LEED for their, kind of their building standard, or their green building kind of ambitions, and they moved to Passive house. And you see Massachusetts, adopting Passive house into their stretch code, New York, New York is adopting Passive house into their climate work. And it's because we have something now that and it's just, it's just basically it's based on building physics, it's just physics. You know, it's not, it's not, it's not kind of proprietary or, you know, brand based, it's just, hey, let's, let's apply building physics, and understand how heat and moisture, go through buildings and design accordingly. And then, and then there's like this set of digital tools that designers can use to make that they don't have to become physicists themselves.
• 25:24
  Zach Semke: Fortunately, they they have these these set of tools that they can apply to their designs to dial them in and create cool buildings that also perform well.
• 25:36
  Tim Montague: Yeah. And this is why I think Passive house is so important is it is a it's a very first principles approach to building buildings that are 90% Plus more efficient than standard construction. It means thicker walls, it means tighter envelopes, means heat recovery, ventilation, but again, we have all this technology, we just have to design for it. And and then make trade offs on a case by case basis. Do you do you put resources into insulation or into photovoltaics? There are important trade offs that you can make from an economic perspective, which also so there's, there's there's room for there's room for evolution, so to speak, and you've seen just in the last 10 years, how Passive house has, has evolved and changed and grown. But let's talk about the accelerators that because I'm super excited for what you guys have done. And if you're listening go to passive house accelerator.com just like it sounds Passive House X celebrator.com It's an amazing storehouse of information.
• 26:44
  Tim Montague: They've got a one, a live event that they produce every week, which is attended by dozens and dozens of building professionals, which is super impressive what you guys have done with your live events, you've got a podcast, you've got a huge, a new YouTube channel, which we'll talk about, you've got a magazine. And then articles, you know, so many resources here for people to engage and get more knowledgeable, but but really to build your network and your knowledge base. So what a great compliment to PHSI and fierce who were, you know, the standards bodies, and great sources for professional training and certification of people and products. And methodologies. Right. Those are great things. But now, it's the perfect triangle, I think with the with the accelerator. So what is the story behind the accelerator? And tell us a little bit about, you know, what you're up to and what the future of the accelerator is?
• 27:50
  Zach Semke: Yeah, absolutely.
• 27:50
  Zach Semke: Well, first of all, Tim, that was an amazing summary of the accelerator very, very well done. And very, also very, very generous. It's been a really exciting ride that accelerators about four years old, it was started by Michael Engli, who's it continues to be very involved in in the work. Michael is a architect based in Manhattan, he lives in Brooklyn, he is one of the leaders in retrofit, retrofit Passive House projects in Brooklyn and Manhattan, so a lot of brownstones. And, you know, just taking these crazy, leaky, you know, amazing but problematic buildings and turning them into, you know, just beautiful and quiet and, you know, full of fresh air spaces. So in that work, so in order to achieve that. He has over time built this community of practice among his contractors and so it so he, in order to work with Michael as a as a builder, or a subcontractor, you need to participate in these in these exchanges. They're debriefs, essentially, of learning from these buildings from these projects, and share share with your competitors, what you learned, so that they can they can up their game on on their next project. And so it's over time, you know, it's been, that's become a community that people will really want to be part of, and has allowed him to be successful in delivering these complex, you know, puzzles of of retrofits of these crazy old buildings. So he's that essentially, he wanted to create an online platform that could that have the same spirit and then wanted to do the same thing and recognise also that that the community wanted a place where people from all walks of Passive House life and decarbonizing buildings, life could come together. So, there wasn't this is only fee. So, this is only ePHI It was basically this is this is all comers are welcome, this is ecumenical, we can learn, you know, learn from one another's successes and mistakes, and move us forward.
• 30:11
  Zach Semke: This is actually just as little aside, this goes back to a similar concept that, like the solar cost curve Rights Law Swanson's law, that the the power of learning to drive down cost, it's not exactly the same in the built environment, it's going to be it's slower. But the same sort of dynamic is, is is at play. And so if we can figure out how to be better about sharing our lessons with one another, then we can bring the cost delta between conventional construction and pass fast construction down closer and closer toward zero. And in some cases, depending on the climate and the building type, it's actually pretty darn close or even at zero. That's not the case in in all in all building types, of course. So So that's for me, that's what made me really passionate about joining forces with Michael and becoming part of the the accelerator was that potential of helping to to get to a place where we don't have to have a cost conversation anymore about Passive house. So,
• 31:26
  Tim Montague: so tell us a little more about the accelerator. What is the business model? And how long have you been part of the accelerator?
• 31:36
  Zach Semke: Yeah, so I joined in 2019. And at that time, we thought and The business model, this accelerator is an LLC. So we're a not profit making for profit business at this point.
• 31:49
  Zach Semke: We're a media company is essentially what we are. So we I joined in 2019. And the idea at that point was that the accelerator would be kind of like, would be an aggregator of news and articles that were already out there about passive house, or that people could write. And, and, to a degree, we're still that, but then COVID hit. And one of our, a couple of our good friends in Vancouver BC, approached us they had been doing in person social events for for, you know, years. So this is Sean Santa Maura Mati Paulson. Sean had been organising Passive house socials for forever there, that COVID hit and I think it was probably Monty's brainstorm was like, Hey, let's do a zoom, let's do a zoom. So the very first week of lockdown, they organised a zoom where somebody came and presented about Passive house.
• 32:44
  Zach Semke: And it was, I think it was the University of Victoria project.
• 32:49
  Zach Semke: And I think there were like, 90 people, they're very successful.
• 32:54
  Zach Semke: And then they they approached us and said, Hey, this was really great, but we don't want to organise these would you be willing to do that they were looking for that place where a platform that would be, again, agnostic to PHP, or PHP is projects open to both. And we were like, of course, we'd love to do that. And it just took off. And so this was the early days of COVID. So zoom was awesome was was something that was exciting for people, people were, you know, hungry to connect socially. And so we had zoom calls of like, 300 people coming together. And you know, they'd last two and a half hours, we'd start with a brief a short, a fast, factual and fun was the the moniker or the slogan, fast, factual, and fun presentation for 15 to 20 minutes tops, and then a bunch of q&a open, you know, open discussion as a Zoom meeting, not a zoom webinar. And that became our identity really, and sort of supercharged, this role or kind of accelerated our taking on the role of being a community hub, and a place that everyone was coming together.
• 34:11
  Zach Semke: And so we had, you know, people from New Zealand, from Australia, from, from Germany, from all across the US, and Canada, Mexico, I mean, all, just all over the place in in Europe, in the UK. And so we became this place where, you know, we produce a bunch of event of events, and that's, that's continues to this day.
• 34:31
  Zach Semke: And so, so now we're, we are our average is about 150 people on our, on our Wednesday calls, which is pretty amazing.
• 34:42
  Tim Montague: That is totally amazing. I love that, that golf fast and fun. And you clearly you're doing something right, because those calls, I've just been on a few of them, but they're so well attended. And, and you attract such tremendous talent to to give, you know, quick talks, and then you have breakout discussions. And, you know, so you're connecting people to one another, and giving a you know, you're creating an outlet for people to share their ideas and expertise internationally. You know, we get this occasionally in the solar industry at conferences.
• 35:20
  Tim Montague: And, but but we don't get it on a on a weekly basis, other than through webinars, and those are our so one way generally right there subject matter experts giving presentations, or being part of a panel discussion, which is useful. But it's not a a It's not what you have created with your live events, this, this gathering and meeting. So it's an amazing clearing house.
• 35:47
  Tim Montague: So let's just reiterate, you're doing these live weekly events.
• 35:51
  Tim Montague: And so when you go to Passive house accelerator.com, you go to attend that tab, then there you see the accelerator live. But you're doing other events as well, right, not just this Zoom meeting, you're doing some face to face events.
• 36:11
  Zach Semke: We Yeah, we are starting to do that. So for example, coming up in the first week of May we're doing a an event with an organisation called breakin winter, which is a an architecture engineering and construction community in New York City. And we're doing it an in person event collaborative collaboratively with them about retrofits of buildings. You know, there's this local law 97 in New York, which is is mandating that buildings began to perform better and better over time. And so there are all these existing buildings that need to dramatically reduce their carbon emissions. So retrofits are key.
• 36:52
  Zach Semke: So that's what that's about. We also, we also worked with the Passive house. Institute recently, for their conference in these button Germany to we we co hosted their party at that conference party. And then before that, we've co hosted the conference party with theists in Chicago. So we are we're starting to do some in person stuff, which is fun, as well.
• 37:18
  Zach Semke: But I mean, still, most of our programming is, is our online stuff. But we're really curious about how, what, what kind of unique ways we can do in person events that complement the in person events by the other organisations rather than compete with them.
• 37:39
  Tim Montague: That's great. You know, yeah, as you mentioned, both pH i and fi is Hold, hold, you know, national or international conferences every year. And so you're augmenting that which is, which is wonderful. And so important. You know, for me, the the most important thing about the accelerators that you're bringing together these two camps, there really was a major schism, politically between fears and PHSI. And people tended to fall into one camp or another, and there was antagonism between the two. But it wasn't in the interest of, of, you know, net zero in the built environment, or the economy, or many professionals who are just like, we just want to do good work and build really good buildings. So get over it.
• 38:23
  Tim Montague: So yeah, I really love this love this model. And I'm trying to figure out ways of copying what you've done here. So let's, let's definitely stay in touch.
• 38:41
  Zach Semke: Absolutely. I mean, that's very, that's very generous in your portrayal. But please do copy whenever you Yeah, I'm happy to happy to share.
• 38:50
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I mean, today, you know, the Clean Power Hour is is just a fraction of of what you guys are up to, and I do do webinars, and I do podcasting, obviously, and I do a news, a live show every week.
• 39:02
  Tim Montague: But it's nothing like what what you guys been up to what else? I guess, should we highlight in the last couple minutes together, that people may not know about or may want to find?
• 39:15
  Tim Montague: You know, if you're working with building owners that are thinking about retrofitting their building, or working with designers who are designing buildings to be very low carbon?
• 39:24
  Tim Montague: What else should our listeners know about the accelerator?
• 39:32
  Zach Semke: Good question. Well, definitely check out our new YouTube channel called reimagined buildings. We'll be doing short, more short form explainers about about Passive house. The Passive house approach to design, I think, I think one overarching thing is is that Passive house is both a way to mitigate climate change.
• 39:53
  Zach Semke: So reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and also and I think support the clean energy transition by basically hitting the winter peak load, right, there's a thermal a big that, I don't know if you know, the topping curve, right, where, where there's this massive uptake, increase in heating demand from buildings, that it has a big impact on the grid.
• 40:19
  Zach Semke: That happens in the winter when there's not a lot of sun. Right?
• 40:24
  Zach Semke: And, and if it's, if it's, it's not windy, then maybe we have a problem with with with, with wind energy as well. So So Passive house and, and energy efficiency in general can help address that. But the other piece of it is that it's about climate adaptation, and creating buildings that are more passively survivable, passively resilient to severe climate impacts. And we're beginning to experience those I you know, was we were all shocked in the Pacific Northwest when we got hit by those heat dumps completely like to get to 215 RB 200 415 degrees Fahrenheit, in Portland, Oregon. You know, 80 degrees is is hot in the Pacific Northwest, sometimes it hits 100 in Portland 115 was frickin ridiculous. And that those kinds of events, you know, we need buildings that that can withstand those and create livable conditions, even when the power fails because it's the grid is overtaxed by AC all that stuff. Like the the resilience of creating better buildings is It's not just about the the energy question, it's also now about our our ability to be to thrive moving forward in this changing world. So I think that, as you're thinking about all of the different elements that go into this important clean energy transition that we're doing, don't forget about that role that that buildings can play, I would say,
• 42:06
  Tim Montague: Indeed, indeed.
• 42:06
  Tim Montague: Now, you mentioned this new YouTube channel, is it part of the existing Passive House accelerator channel or a completely separate channel?
• 42:14
  Zach Semke: Thank you for asking. It's completely separate. And the reason for that is our current channel that the existing channel Passive House six is called pasos accelerator. And that is our storehouse, and library of our live events. So all of you know, we record every zoom call that we do, all the presentations are available there. This new channel is video that's created for video. So this, you know, quick like pithy explainers and project tours and, and we have a video producer now on staff full time, who is helping us produce this work. And the purpose of that is we understand that there's this big community of people who care about building decarbonisation, they may not be willing to, to invest in watching a recording of a Zoom, zoom call, right, that takes a certain level of commitment and geekiness that we hope that a lot of people will progress to.
• 43:14
  Zach Semke: But at this point, we want to be able to tell the story to as to to the, you know, 80,000 members of the membership of the American Institute of Architects, for example. Right.
• 43:26
  Zach Semke: And so that's, that's the purpose of reimagined buildings is to is to create content that and, and video stories that will hook people quickly.
• 43:39
  Tim Montague: Great. Well make sure I have the link for that. I know you send it to me in our pre show last week, but I've lost that. Okay. So when you go to YouTube, if you just search on reimagined buildings, you will find the channel it does show up easily. So that's great.
• 43:55
  Tim Montague: And, you know, it's at reimagined buildings. So and you'll see a classic Passive House symbol, the symbol of the home or the belt, you know, the building envelope. And, and so you find some shorts there, they've now launched Oh, you gotta I gotta click through. So you've got two videos on there now and then how many videos will you be adding? You know, like, over over the months in the next six months, what's your goal?
• 44:26
  Zach Semke: We'll do a new a new video a week, in addition to a bunch of shorts that are related to that video. Wow. So you know, total will probably be, you know, five pieces a week, but it's that there's that one feature that will be produced every week. Very cool. We have one our first the next one that's coming up that will be published probably by the time this this air this podcast airs is a tour of Michael inquiries, retrofitted Brooklyn brownstone.
• 44:50
  Zach Semke: So it's the first episode of something that series we're calling passive pads. So cool.
• 45:00
  Tim Montague: All right. Well, thank you so much Zack Zemke, director of the Passive House accelerator for coming on the show. How can our listeners find you Zack,
• 45:09
  Zach Semke: I'm on LinkedIn at Zachary Sankey and and join us to the accelerator. We'd love to see you on one of the Wednesday calls. It's open to everybody.
• 45:17
  Zach Semke: every first Wednesday of the month, we do a 101 edition of Passive House accelerator live.
• 45:26
  Zach Semke: So if you're if you're new to Passive House and and buildings and decarbonisation, that's a great place to start to. It's a fun group.
• 45:36
  Tim Montague: Great, well check out all of our content at clean power hour.com Give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify. That's the best thing you can do to help others find this content. Subscribe to our YouTube channel. Reach out to me. You can find me on LinkedIn.
• 45:48
  Tim Montague: You can find me at clean power hour.com And tell your friends about the show that is the best thing to raise awareness of the importance of clean energy and the energy transition writ large. I'm Tim Montague. Let's grow solar and storage. Take care