From the Construct Ireland archives

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

If you’re not assessing the environmental performance of your suppliers and their products, it’s rapidly becoming a case of “caveat emptor”. Many of the world’s biggest companies are now buying green, and the Irish government is about to follow suit. Ignore the issue and you put your company at a competitive disadvantage, argues Brian O’Kennedy, managing director of Clearstream Solutions

In recent years it’s become increasingly accepted that the age of cheap and abundant oil and gas supplies is coming to an end, and that future energy needs will have to be met from cleaner, more widely available fuel sources. According to Richard Douthwaite, the prospects of exponentially rising costs and failure to ramp up carbon capture and storage will mitigate against coal’s ability to take up the slack

Green architect Minka McInerney profiles six unique green buildings including a cardboard school building, a globe-trotting recycled museum & the tallest timber building in the world

Four years ago the construction industry was focused on building big and fast — but at the same time, a small team was carefully and ecologically retrofitting a terraced Dublin house on a tight budget according to passive house principles.

Of huge importance to our national identity and one of the major features of the rural Irish countryside are the derelict small cottages, scattered across the land, that have long fallen into ruin. Often situated in Irelands most beautiful and remote areas, Terry Cunningham, Rural Enterprise Adviser of the Southern Tipperary office of Teagasc sought to revitalise and fully utilise these charming and unique dwellings from our past.

In an ideal world every occupied building in Ireland would be energy upgraded to the highest standard, tapping into numerous benefits for the building occupant, the construction industry and society as a whole. Construct Ireland is calling for the introduction of pay as you save, a repayment model which offers the potential of making significant energy upgrade investments achievable in the vast majority of Irish buildings, as Jeff Colley reveals.

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.

With the publication earlier this year of three reports on drinking water quality, urban waste water discharges, and implementation of the phosphorous regulations, the EPA’s Office of Environmental Enforcement(OEE) has presented an overview of water management by local authorities in Ireland. Presented as a package of reports, they paint a picture of how local authorities are doing in relation to the management of water resources in the country. Construct Ireland’s Jeff Colley speaks to Doctor Matt Crowe, Programme Manager of the OEE on the state of national water quality.

With some of the most impressive moves toward sustainability over the last few years coming in the form of planning requirements, it should come as no surprise that many local authorities are pioneering energy efficient housing in their own housing stock. Jason Walsh visited a site in Oldtown, County Dublin, to see how Fingal County Council is putting sustainability into practice with help from Keenan Timber Frame, Ecological Building Systems, Nutech Renewables and others