Welcome letter from Sue Riddlestone OBE
Dear Candidate,
Thank you for your interest in the role of Energy and carbon consultant at Bioregional.
I co-founded Bioregional in 1994, and we’ve been breaking daunting sustainability challenges into achievable, collaborative steps ever since.
It is my great privilege to lead a small but passionate team of experts dedicated to helping businesses and communities to thrive within a net-zero and sustainable world.
This challenge has never been more important, or more urgent, and so we are embarking on a new growth strategy to scale up our impact.
In 2022 we moved our head office to Sustainable Ventures – a sustainable coworking space and ‘ecosystem’ of likeminded organisations – near Waterloo, in Central London.
As our Energy and carbon consultant, your primary focus will be on designing and developing solutions for existing buildings and advising on new developments to genuinely deliver on the climate emergency. This means working on everything from energy modelling and retrofit guidance to reviewing planning applications and delivering training in support of zero-carbon energy in the built environment.
I am proud of the culture that we’ve developed over the years at Bioregional. We are professional, honest, and always true to our values: we're big thinkers, holistic doers, and collaborative enablers. And we pride ourselves on being a fantastic place for colleagues to develop their skills and career, whether they are a recent graduate or a seasoned professional.
If you feel you have the skills and experience we’re looking for, and you share our passion for securing a livable future, then we would be delighted to hear from you. If you have any questions about the role, or the process, please email recruitment@bioregional.com.
You may also download the job description as a PDF here.
We look forward to receiving your application.
Sue Riddlestone OBE, CEO and Co-founder
Job profile
Purpose
We are seeking a creative and ambitious environmental designer, engineer, or highly proficient technician. You will have three to five years of experience building energy modelling, embodied carbon assessment and the UK building regulatory landscape to support Bioregional in analysing and developing innovative solutions to the net-zero carbon challenge.
This role has a focus on designing and developing solutions for existing buildings. Bioregional has undertaken award-winning grant-funded research projects into this area – the ideal candidate would be passionate about exploring new relationships and solutions with a wide variety of potential project partners – including energy suppliers, heat pump installers, IoT monitoring companies retrofit architects and contractors.
Additionally, this role will support Bioregional’s work in the new-build sector, helping to steer and guide net-zero strategies and sustainability strategies and approaches for ambitious new mixed-use schemes alongside our growing portfolio of work supporting Local Authorities with ambitious net-zero planning policy approaches.
Scope
This role will work across Bioregional’s projects with developers, housing associations, asset owners, and local authorities. The candidate will be expected to:
- Develop carbon reduction plans and retrofit strategies for housing across all categories of tenure. To analyse carbon reduction options and provide advice on medium-term retrofit strategies to stakeholders within a PAS 2035 process.
- Provide consultation advice to companies with large property portfolios, calculate the carbon footprint of their estate and create zero carbon action plans and targets in line with the latest climate science. This requires being comfortable with large data handling and integration with presentation tools such as Power BI would be preferable.
- Develop zero-carbon and wider sustainability strategies for new-build residential and non-residential developments.
- Undertake detailed energy modelling using industry-standard methodologies such as SAP, and PHPP on built environment projects. IESVE knowledge and skills for compliance sensitivity analysis and CIBSE TM54 would also be of benefit in our new build work but also in support of commercial policy evidence bases.
- Undertake detailed embodied carbon (and whole-life carbon) using industry-standard methodologies and software such as One Click LCA, AECB PH Ribbon on built environment projects whilst also supporting our new build work and commercial policy evidence bases.
- Engage with local authorities to calculate baseline carbon emissions (own operations and whole district) and develop detailed zero carbon action plans in response to climate emergency declarations.
- Advise our senior leaders to inform policy and industry practice to achieve zero carbon energy in the built environment.
We are looking for someone who is flexible and will enjoy supporting a variety of work requirements. The role may involve occasional UK-based travel.
Seniority
You will work predominantly within our Sustainable Places team (but there are likely to be opportunities to work with our Sustainable Business team), advising both junior and senior members of the team on energy and carbon.
Skills and attributes
You will be highly numerate, analytical, and organised, able to work with minimal supervision and comfortable managing stakeholder relationships within specific areas of project delivery.
Duties and key responsibilities
Project delivery: 75%
- Modelling carbon emissions from existing buildings stock and other major sources of emissions.
- Developing net-zero and sustainability strategies for new-build schemes and supporting ambitious net-zero planning policy.
- Providing technical advice to clients to help them establish impactful energy retrofit programs (and other scopes highlighted above) with a particular focus on residential properties initially with potential extension into commercial schools and offices.
- Production of concise, accurate, well-researched and well-presented reports and other outputs to client briefs.
- Organising project meetings and workshops.
- Preparing and delivering presentations at key project milestones.
Business development: 15%
- Working with other team members to prepare commercial proposals and submit tender responses to local authorities. This will include developing methodologies, budgeting, securing project partners where required, and providing case studies
Knowledge management and continuous learning: 5%
- Attending internal seminars and external training to develop technical knowledge and industry exposure.
- Skills training as appropriate to role which may include but not be limited to IT, project management and communications.
- A structured training programme, including funded professional courses in focus areas, will be developed at the commencement of employment.
Organisational management: 5%
- Attending general meetings including project updates, team meetings and line management meetings.
- Maintaining accurate and up to date timesheets.
Skills and experience required
We acknowledge that no one will ever meet all the requirements for a role, so if you think this role is right for you, then we would love to hear from you regardless of whether you meet all the criteria below.
1. Skills and abilities
Required:
- Experience of SAP, SBEM, IES and/or other energy modelling of buildings such as PHPP.
- Experience of One Click LCA and/or AECB PH Ribbon for embodied (or whole life) carbon calculations.
- Proven advanced skills in data visualisation, such as Excel and/or Power BI.
- Ability to work under pressure and meet deadlines, independently and as a team member or leader.
- Clear communicator–comfortable with presenting to an audience on both technical and non-technical matters.
Pluses:
- Experience retrofitting and energy efficiency of buildings, particularly residential.
- Experience modelling carbon emissions from existing buildings stock and other major sources of emissions.
- Experience and familiarity with PHPP and TM54 to act as QC Checking.
- Experience developing carbon strategies or roadmaps for local authorities/housing associations
- Experience developing zero-carbon strategies for new-build developments
- Ability to support the preparation of compelling proposals.
- Experience creatively solving problems using “code based” analysis approaches – such as Grasshopper tools in Rhino, and/or Python scripting.
- Linking technical data to the geospatial context through ArcGIS or FELT Mapping software.
2. Knowledge
Required:
- Understanding of carbon modelling methodologies, and their respective strengths and weaknesses.
- Good understanding of methodologies for embodied carbon quantification and design principles for circular economy.
- Understanding of the policy and regulatory landscape relating to building energy efficiency and building related renewables technologies in the UK.
- Understanding of net zero carbon standards.
- Understanding of energy systems (grid, gas, district) and smart applications such as demand side response, grid services etc.
- Knowledge of building integrated renewable energy systems.
Pluses:
- Understanding carbon inventory, reporting and protocols.
- Understanding energy and carbon data sources for modelling regions and cities, and their respective strengths and weaknesses.
- Understanding construction processes, materials, timescales, and costs.
- Understanding factors affecting occupant comfort, including use of test methods (e.g. BUS), modelling methods and software for monitoring applications for POE.
- Knowledge and experience in building fabric, construction methods, and in mechanical and electrical building services and systems.
3. Education and qualifications
Required:
- Educated to degree level in Engineering or other STEM disciplines, architecture surveying/construction, or geography with a specific focus on data/carbon/modelling – or equivalent professional experience.
Pluses:
- Master's course in relevant topic/dissertation and/or equivalent professional experience
- Chartered in a relevant professional institute- CIBSE chartered engineer is preferred
- Qualified as a Passivhaus Consultant/Designer
- Qualified as a WLCA assessor
Our benefits
At Bioregional you will create real-world impact in your day-to-day role, helping businesses and communities to transition to a net-zero, sustainable future. We also offer a range of other benefits to support our colleagues:
- Work-life balance: work is only one part of your life and making time for other things is important – be that your family, friends, or yourself. In this role, you’d be required to be in our London office with the team or with clients for three days a week, leaving you the flexibility to work at different locations and times during the rest of the week, whether that be in the comfort of your own home or collaborating with colleagues in the office. We are currently piloting a 9-day working fortnight, with every other Friday off, to give the team more time back to do the things they love.
- A commitment to diversity and inclusion: we foster a supportive, inclusive workplace where people can be themselves and achieve great things. We are committed to improving diversity and inclusion within the built environment and sustainability sectors – including our own organisation – and we actively encourage applications from people of a Black, Asian or minority ethnic background.
- Health and wellbeing: health and wellbeing are fundamental to our ethos and our vision of a better world. We make sure we’re a great place to work through regular feedback with colleagues and run regular social activities – in person and online – to build and maintain our positive working culture. We are committed to supporting our team through a range of benefits, from our employee assistance programme to our cycle-to-work scheme.
- Professional development: we have a learning culture and help our people to enjoy rewarding careers where they will grow and develop their skills. We build and share our knowledge through regular staff seminars and offer 10 days of training and development time each year, a training budget for each employee, plus additional support for formal training and study. Bioregional’s training pathway means that colleagues always understand and have access to the training they need to progress their career – be they an Analyst or a Head of Department.
- An ethical employer: we live our values in everything we do. As well as working from sustainable office space alongside like-minded businesses, your benefits include a 6% employer’s ethical pension contribution and 25 days of annual leave, rising by one day for each year you work with us, for up to five years, to 30 days of annual leave.
Photo: the bar at Sustainable Ventures, Waterloo. © Sustainable Ventures.
People-shaped support for planet-sized goals
What do we mean when we say “People-shaped support for planet-sized goals”?
Yes, it’s a nice catchy phrase, but it also speaks to the challenge at the heart of all daunting sustainability goals; that the bigger and more ambitious they are, the more critical it is to simplify and socialise them, so people can come together to actually make them a reality.
We first made our name with the One Planet Living® framework, designed to break the biggest sustainability goals there are into actionable, inspiring building blocks. Today, we’ve expanded our tools and methodologies to support innovative organisations of all kinds with their own unique challenges.
Our purpose is unchanged, but everything else flexes. We adapt our expertise and methods to fit our clients' exact needs, challenges, projects and culture. We help them achieve commercial goals while optimising their impact.
Serious sustainability thinking, fluidly executed. And dare we say it, enjoyable too.
About Bioregional
Bioregional is one of the UK’s original sustainability consultancies. Founded in 1994, we have been winning awards and working with partners to create cutting-edge sustainability solutions for 30 years.
As a purpose-led organisation, our mission is to help businesses and communities to respond to the climate and ecological emergency and create a world where we can live happy and healthy lives within the limits of our planet’s resources.
We focus on real-world impact, acting as a ‘critical friend’ to our clients and challenging them to innovate at the boundaries of best practice. We have built our expertise, knowledge, and reputation by collaborating with leading industry players, from leading multinational retailers to housebuilders, real estate investors, pension funds, and local authorities.
Our One Planet Living principles have guided the development of exemplar projects around the world – in the UK these include BedZED, the UK's first large-scale eco-village, the sustainability strategy for London’s bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics, and the UK's first eco-town, Elmsbrook, in Oxfordshire. We have been winning awards and creating cutting-edge solutions using this framework.
As a social enterprise, we’re committed to maximising our impact. We also devote time and resources to influencing policy and industry practices. In other words: we really mean it.
Small team. Big impact.
- Last year, our Sustainable Places team worked with 4 developers and housebuilders on sustainability strategies for housing-led, mixed-use development. Collectively these could deliver over 5,000 sustainable homes, as well as over 350,000m2 of sustainable commercial or community space.
- We supported nearly 30 local authorities on their planning and policy work, which will help deliver approximately 19,000 sustainable homes every year as part of local authority growth plans.
- Our Sustainable Business team supported 40 organisations to develop and deliver their sustainability strategies, sustainable product guidelines, carbon footprinting, and net-zero roadmaps. These businesses collectively employ over 120,000 people, with a total turnover of over £17bn.
- We make our One Planet Living framework available to use free of charge by communities, local authorities, businesses, and housebuilders around the world. Today, 7.3 million people across 22 countries and six continents are now living in or visiting cities and communities that have used One Planet Living.
- There are hundreds of One Planet Living projects around the world, and the very best achieve the status of Leader or Global Leader, representing a gold standard in sustainable placemaking. There are now 35 One Planet Living Leaders and Global Leaders.
- Read our full Impact Review here.
Background photograph: Les Villages Nature Paris - a One Planet Living Leader.
30 years. 30+ awards.
Our data boffins have checked, and that's a pretty good ratio.
Recent highlights include:
- UK Green Business Awards 2024: Winner - Consultancy of the Year
- Property Week Edge Awards 2024: Winner - ESG Icon Award
- edie awards 2024 - finalist: Consultancy of the Year
- edie awards 2024 - finalist: Net-zero innovation of the year
- RESI Awards 2023: Professional Team of the Year - winner
- Sustainability Consulting Awards 2023: Transformational Partnership SME Award - winner
- Unlock Net Zero Awards 2023 – finalist
- UK Green Business Awards 2023 – finalist
- Housing Digital innovation awards 2023 – finalist
- Inside Housing Development Awards 2022 - finalist
How we do things
At Bioregional, you will join a team of sustainability experts dedicated to making even the biggest sustainability goals easy to realise.
We are entrepreneurial and professional, always delivering the highest standards of work and giving colleagues the freedom to innovate. And we treat everyone with respect, support our colleagues, and embrace diversity and inclusion to create an environment in which everyone can thrive.
Our values:
Big thinkers
- We’re purposeful and ambitious, supporting and inspiring bold sustainability targets
Holistic doers
- We’re diverse, flexible experts who look at the full picture and adapt to each situation
Collaborative enablers
- We’re collaborators and simplifiers who make progress easier for people and teams
Bioregional away days.
(Often rainy. Always brilliant.)
Sustainable offices and hybrid working
At Bioregional you can work flexibly from Sustainable Ventures in central London, Europe’s largest climate tech ecosystem, offering easy commuting options and a wealth of local amenities on London's South Bank. We also work from the Eco Business Centre – the UK’s first Passivhaus offices – in Bicester, Oxfordshire.
We offer flexible and hybrid working to help colleagues embrace the benefits of working from home, while ensuring we have enough time for face-to-face contact and collaboration. Most team members average two to three days-per-week in the office.
We're piloting a 9-day fortnight
Last November, we joined the UK’s second reduced working hours pilot, trialling a 9-day fortnight with no loss of pay (sounds good, right?). We're now very excited to have extended the trial for another six months!
We’re proud of our rich history of progressive ideas, forward-thinking attitudes and our proven track record of innovation – and we see this pilot as another step in that journey.
Equality, diversity, and inclusion
While others roll back their ambitions, we're upping ours
We foster a supportive, inclusive workplace where people can be themselves and achieve great things. We are committed to improving diversity and inclusion within our organisation – and we actively encourage applications from people of a Black, Asian or minority ethnic background. We want to grow our team with a wealth of diverse ideas, opinions and perspectives and want to hear from you if you believe you can contribute to this.
We also collaborate with others to support industry-wide D&I initiatives. We make sure that the events we organise or take part in are as diverse as possible. We promote careers in sustainability to young people, including through the Greater London Authority climate kickstart initiative, to encourage people from all backgrounds to join the profession.
Testimonials
"I knew from my first day I had joined somewhere special. Bioregional is a place of immense warmth and creative problem-solving. I know that I can speak to any colleague, and I will always enjoy the conversation and friendliness."
"Bioregional has a fantastic culture and is made up of truly talented people with a can-do attitude. I really value partnership working and helping clients to create impact, and have been lucky enough to lead a wide variety of projects and develop deep relationships with businesses."
"This small organisation really punches above its weight – the team is highly impactful, driving change across multiple sectors. Bioregional is highly collaborative and friendly, but driven and daring. Working here will guarantee an endless variety of exciting challenges, a supportive and passionate set of colleagues and the opportunity to be at the forefront of tackling the climate and ecological crisis."
"Bioregional really gives you the building blocks. It’s up to you to use your initiative, but we will always support you. We have a flat hierarchy so if junior staff members have ideas or suggestions, they will always be listened to, supported, and actively encouraged."
How to apply
Please apply by submitting a CV and cover letter, describing why you want the job and what you would bring to the role, to recruitment@bioregional.com
You may also download the job description as a PDF here.
If you think this role is right for you, then we would love to hear from you, even if you think you don’t meet all the requirements set out above.
We want to grow our team with a wealth of diverse ideas, opinions and perspectives and want to hear from you if you believe you can contribute to this.
Deadline: 9am Monday 15 September 2025
We encourage you to apply for this role as soon as possible, as we will review applications and conduct initial interviews throughout the advertising period and reserve the right to close the advert early should we find the right candidate. If we close the advert early, this page will be updated/removed to reflect that, so please do apply if you're reading this.
Interviews will otherwise take place 22-25 September at our offices at County Hall, central London. Please let us know in your application if you will not be available during this week.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Image below: BedZED eco-village at sunset
Credits:
Created with images by William - "Aerial view of British town set in beautiful countryside in warm light of sunset" • Nick Beer - "Aerial view of how private and affordable housing seen in rural Essex, UK. The new homes feature roof solar panels as standard." • Roxana - "Misty landscape with fir forest in hipster vintage retro style" • FiledIMAGE - "Mount Buller Walking Trails in Summer"