Developers can build sustainably and at scale, if they want to. With Nicola Cronin and Stephen O'Shea (Cairn Homes Plc)

A wise woman once said: "sustainability is the doing, ESG is the talking about it".

Today an Irish house-building giant has made a major move on Passive House — publishing a positioning paper and announcing the ongoing construction of over 1,700 homes to the standard.

Joining us to talk about this are Nicola Cronin (Senior Sustainability Analyst) and Stephen O'Shea (Head of Sustainable Construction and ESG Reporting).

Rather than this being another episode about Passive House we're more concerned with why a massive housebuilder has chosen to build to the standard. In this case, the answer highlights the positive impact that corporate reporting – in this case ESG – can have on the practice of construction. 

Where we've often derided ESG factors as a corporate fig leaf, in this instance ESG factors have driven institutional change. Most importantly, the scale of this change clearly illustrates the massive impact that big developers can have. If they choose to try.

In short, we're talking about how change is made and why change is made.

Links are below.

Notes from the show

**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.


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

Zero Ambitions 2024