Dr Brenda Boardman reflects on the world's energy situation, climate change and the growing problem of fuel poverty. She gives practical advice on how this affects building or renovating a property.

Roger Hunt explains how to make a period property energy efficient without damaging the building or creating problems for yourself in the future. Also House Planning Help gets its first guest blogger, Paul Mallion from Conker Conservation.

Alex Rice, Senior Engineer at Green Tomato Energy, explains that there are few technical challenges that remain when retrofitting a period home into a low energy building and it is a case of how you apply those solutions to the given building.

Tom Pakenham from Green Tomato Energy describes the practical challenges of making a Victorian house energy efficient. Plus how passive house principles helped a Norwegian explorer in the 1890s.

Tahir Sharif talks about how he built up his knowledge in order to commission an energy efficient home, while Ben discovers some great thinking from the Home World Exhibition of 1981.

Ted Stevens, Chairman of the National Self Build Association in the UK, gives his advice on how to find a good plot of land at a reasonable price. Plus, why Almere in Holland could be a blueprint for other large scale self build developments across the world.

Adam Dadeby from Passivhaus Homes talks about some of the challenges he faced when retrofitting his own home to the Passivhaus standard. He's also co-author of a new book called The Passivhaus Handbook.

Dr Wolfgang Feist describes how better energy efficiency opens a path to making us less dependent on fossil fuels and we have that knowledge now.

Pat Wilkinson from Touchwood Homes reveals why he decided to build to the Passivhaus standard and there's a resource for young industry professionals who might just be completing their architecture degrees or building training etc.

Martin Evans from The Malthouse Consultancy talks about energy efficiency and Ben Adam-Smith sets up a consumer mastermind group on LinkedIn to collate the good and bad of house design.

Ben Adam-Smith explains his motivation for creating this podcast and there's an interview with Simon Lewis, Managing Director of RW Armstrong, a residential builder in the South East of England.