From the Construct Ireland archives

Archie O’Donnell, projects coordinator for Éasca and the Irish Passive House Association

The Orchard, a new building on the campus of Stranmillis College, a teacher training college in Belfast, has become the first winner of a sustainable planning award organised by the Royal Town Planning Institute alongside a host of other awards. Jason Walsh visited the new building to find out about its green credentials.

As Building Regulations tighten on carbon emissions, energy reduction and mandatory renewable energy targets, the task for designers becomes harder and harder. Bobby Gilbert of Bobby Gilbert and Associates explains how a new design tool is making sustainable design easier.

An advocate of sustainable building long before it was fashionable, Bill Quigley of NuTech Renewables has subsequently seen the mainstreaming of sustainability at first hand, having input into substantial projects for Leahy Bros, MKN and GEDA Construction amongst others. In their latest project, NuTech are working with Wicklow County Council on a social housing scheme with impressively high energy performance targets to meet, as Quigley explains.

Chris Croly from BDP outlines the low energy and renewable energy strategies used in University College Cork’s new Environmental Research Institute, a test bed for the design and performance of sustainable buildings, which is ideally suited to housing the 200+ environmental projects carried out by its researchers.

Richard Douthwaite reveals that oil and gas peak are barely mentioned in the Government's recent energy Green Paper.

Achieving building regulations compliance and a good energy rating is one thing. Delivering a genuinely low energy building is quite another. A new scheme by one of Ireland’s most decorated developers may help show the market a way forward.

Kirk Shanks, Senior Researcher at the Sustainability Research Development Group, the Focas Institute, DIT describes the development of this new sustainable generation.

A recent study undertaken by Dublin City Council could serve to shatter many commonly held misconceptions about how existing buildings can perform when compared to new build, even simply just in terms of running costs.

Energy Minister Eamon Ryan recently announced a e9 million fund to be administered by SEI for sustainable housing including, crucially, micro-generation of renewable electricity. Jason Walsh talked to SEI and industry figures to examine the scheme’s future.