Excellent resource for Site and Foundation Drainage best practices. With recommended assemblies for new builds and retrofit. www.bchousing.org/sites/defaul...

#Drax claimed record £999m in subsidies for burning trees in 2025, thinktank says - UK company has received about £8.7bn in renewable energy subsidies since 2012, despite claims wood pellets are not sourced sustainably www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Palantir’s infiltration into the British government is chilling. A world where our health records are used to power state-sponsored surveillance isn’t so far away https://goodlawproject.org/palantir-uses-medical-records-to-target-people-for-ice-in-the-us-will-the-uk-be-next/

Our latest analysis shows that energy losses could be halved by 2050 in a Net Zero system. Why? Because low-carbon technologies like EVs and heat pumps are more efficient, meaning they require less energy to meet the same level of demand. ⚡ Read here: www.theccc.org.uk/publication/...

“Campaigners estimated that Drax received an effective tax break of more than £8billion as a green energy provider despite the Selby plant releasing over 140m tonnes of carbon dioxide between 2013 and 2025.”

Expert group: Young people are losing confidence in the future – rebuilding it will take broad action

But… microbore is absolutely fine for up to 500W or more (depending on exact internal bore). No extra work, no sacrifice of cop and actually.. it’s a neat way of plumbing a rad because pipes are flexible and easy to route. 12mm pex is just fine for most rads. Smaller is often not an issue either.

My experience with the DOE Climate Working Group report is that their analysis is based on cherry picking, misrepresentation, omitting contrary data, and every other scientific felony you can name. This video by Prof. David Romps shows exactly how the "bad science" sausage is made.

Just submitted my response to the wood burning consultation. I had no warnings when I burned wood in wood burners and fire pits, putting my children and neighbours at risk - now I know the harm. It’s time to end unnecessary wood burning. Speak up!

"Straight from the playbook of tobacco". The Stove Industry Association has been pressuring councils to tone down their public health campaigns, telling them they were exploring options for potential legal action. This stinks even more than the burning they promote. #WoodBurning #AirPollution

📌 A reminder: Most of the gas Europe imports is used for heat - to warm our buildings and to provide process heat in industry. Only around 20% of gas is used to generate electricity.

Really good podcast about some of the challenges of insuring buildings made from biobased materials Insurance is one of the barriers to wider adoption of biobased materials in construction, so thank you Ben for covering this topic.

A widespread war in the Middle East is the worst-case scenario for the global oil and gas markets. That war is here, and it could have wide-ranging, long-lasting impacts on energy and climate policy. This week on Zero: What does the Iran war mean for the energy transition? omny.fm/shows/zero/w...

Last summer I launched my campaign against outdated “aim-to-permit” gambling laws. On Hampstead High Street? Not a single betting shop. In lower-income areas? Flooded. Councils are forced to say yes. That’s not fair and it’s damaging our high streets. The fight isn’t over. ✊🏾

February is a great time to talk about… air conditioning. Otherwise known as air to air heat pumps, which can heat as well as cool your home, very efficiently. We have a big new report out today on how suitable air to air heat pumps are for British homes. The answer: quite a lot!

Extreme heat lab: Enduring the climate of the future with @readfearn.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/environment/...

80% of agricultural land is used for livestock (and textiles), yet this huge land use provides only 17% of our calories and 38% of our protein. 16% of the land used for crops provides 83% of our calories and 62% of our protein. It's past time we rethink what we eat.

BREAKING⚡️The High Court has just ruled that the government's draconian ban of Palestine Action was unlawful. This is a massive blow to the Home Office’s authoritarian approach. They need to stop criminalising people protesting a genocide and start ending the UK's complicity

This is a fascinating study into children's exposure to fine particle #AirPollution (PM2.5). Spikes of PM2.5 were "strongly linked to indoor activities, particularly the use of wood-burning stoves." Smoking is also mentioned as a significant source.

Most people don’t know this: Heat pumps REDUCE gas consumption even if running 100% on electricity from a gas fired power plant. More here in my piece for @carbonbrief.org👇 interactive.carbonbrief.org/factcheck/he...

📺Stretford Passivhaus retrofit TV makeover Deep retrofit of a modest Manchester semi-detached home to the Passivhaus retrofit standard features in Guy Martin's 'House without bills', which will air on Monday 9 February 2026 at 9pm on C4. https://passivhaustrust.org.uk/news/detail/?nId=1507

We welcome the idea of #Health warnings on stoves. Did you know that: 👉 A 2025 study by UCL discovered that indoor wood burning is linked to a decline in lung function. 👉 Wood smoke contains hundreds of air pollutants that can cause cancer: formaldehyde & benzene are just two. #WorldCancerDay

District heating offers an efficient way to capture heat that would otherwise be wasted – and is at times the only technology able to do so. Modern networks can capture waste heat from data centres, industry & water treatment to warm homes & businesses 👉 iea.li/4qWC018

Here is a delightful detail on a rubble masonry building. Being on a hilltop, it's exposed to high winds, which, round corners, creates turbulence that forces rain onto the wall. Typically, higher quality masonry is placed here to endure it. On occasion, we get a rounded corner instead.

“I said round about 2011 that I thought that it had serious and worrying implications for the future if millions of adults were queueing up to see Batman movies. Because that kind of infantilisation, that urge towards simpler times, simpler realities – that can very often be a precursor to fascism.”

Do not let AI design your building. The only genius on display here is how creatively bad it is.

Join us and our friends at Compass for the launch of Professor Kate Pickett's new book The Good Society online at 6pm on Wed 4th February. Featuring a truly stacked lineup of Caroline Lucas, Ruth Lister, George Monbiot and of course, Professor Kate Pickett. Sign up now: https://ow.ly/kkpb50Y794O

"because of the upgrade works, he was able to give the house a makeover and renew the property which hadn’t been updated in decades." I like the reverse framing, if refurb can't justify a retrofit, why can't a retrofit be used to justify a refurb?

New article: Air Changes Per Hour Heat Loss in a Retrofit Home Subtitle: Always challenge the values used for air changes in a heat loss survey. It might save you ££ in the long run. Hope this is interesting. I enjoyed pulling this one together. energy-stats.uk/air-changes-...

@chiefgeekad.bsky.social Hey Adam, good to have you more active on here. If you're taking request, can you look into what Adia are doing with their hydrobox/dynamic balancing system. I can't quite get my head around it. Handwaving explanation about machine learning algo is not good enough.

Adia Thermal are developing a smart dynamic balancing system which is attempting to work with any existing system, and then offer upgrade advice for pipework/radiator sizing after installation. I'd be interested to know how they do this. Because it's unclear to me. www.adiathermal.co.uk

What on earth did the Japanese think when they came up with this passive ventilation strategy? asiri-designs.com/resources-1/...

Apols if this is stuff you already know - www.google.co.uk/books/editio...

"Additionally, CATL introduced battery swap-compatible packs in the series, including the #20 battery swap block with 42 kWh capacity, the #25 block with 56 kWh, and the #35 block with 81 kWh." cnevpost.com/2026/01/22/c...

Heat pumps are a great way to deal with the elephant in the room.

Sustainable heat experts in the UK - I hope it's worth taking the time to provide feedback directly to civil servants here, because it's taken me a long while: energygovuk.citizenspace.com/energy-secur...

V. funny interaction between Mark Blyth and Trader types pod bros about deficit hawks and bond market vigilantes. (time stamped) youtu.be/wXn3Qg10DPE?...

In the UK, it is a fact that the left cannot govern, and so must be blocked from power by centre-right politicians, who are incapable of governing, but are wiser than the left, and so imitate the politics of the far-right party, who are also incapable of governing, but will inevitably govern.

Hybrid Foundation Insulation Retrofits: Measure Guideline A retrofitting guide for a vented crawspace void to a conditioned / encapsulated ground floor system. buildingscience.com/sites/defaul...

If you want to know why tech billionaires have a messianic complex, and why they all say they should have studied physics instead, you can't get much better than reading Asimov's “The Last Question” (1956).

Building Science AI/Conversation Tool. It's an effective search tool trained by professionals, which, never 100% right, will be less likely to be wrong, and provides references to articles in a verified database. bscassistant.ai

Smart Ventilation Bricks www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFc8... Ventilated/unconditioned voids under suspended floors have some very counterintuitive dynamics; for example, they get damper in summer, air exchange to dry the void is a minor component of total heat exchange.

This is on Starmer, on Lammy, on Mahmood. Heba's impending death, it seems, is a matter of policy. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

CaptiveAire have produced the most incredible HVAC series I've yet to find on the internet. Everything from the fundamentals of electrical energy generation, thermodynamics, refrigeration cycles, psychrometrics, manufacturing, duct design. youtu.be/4U-XG7cY7bI?...

The Dutch will double intercity bike routes in the next 5 years, from 1100 to 2300km. Every city has local routes: Utrecht, for example, has 420km of separated bike lanes & bike streets. 𝘿𝙤𝙤𝙧𝙛𝙞𝙚𝙩𝙨𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙩𝙚𝙨 allow people to safety go by bike throughout NL. More info: www.fietsersbond.nl/nieuws/doorf...