From the Construct Ireland archives

Just outside the quiet rural town of Templepatrick, County Antrim, located ten miles north of Belfast, is a timber frame house that sets new standards for comfort and, the owners hope, sustainability. Jason Walsh visited the house and found a traditional aesthetic that belies its ultra modern sustainability features

Invest NI has itself invested in a new headquarters in central Belfast that it hopes will be seen as a model for sustainable development, as Richard Linger, Sustainability Director, White Young Green Ireland 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.

With the threats posed by anthropogenic climate change now accepted as a key international issue, efforts to curb carbon dioxide emissions are becoming manifest around the world in spite of – and even as a response to – the global recession. But any such efforts may be in vain if the focus on carbon dioxide distracts from the need to curtail methane emissions, as Richard Douthwaite explains

A new development at Grange Lough, Rosslare, reveals that passive houses can be made Irish – both in terms of what they’re built with, and how they look.

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.

Semi-state business Bord Gáis have placed green innovation at the centre of their business strategy. As CEO John Mullins reveals, pay as you save and renewable energy will shape the company’s future.

Richard Douthwaite explores the best options available to solve the intermittency problem of wind energy and help Ireland to harness its famously abundant natural resources

When it comes to redeveloping old buildings, green designers face two choices: replace existing structures with modern, energy efficient buildings or refurbish and avoid the embodied energy and waste of demolition and new construction. Lenny Antonelli visited a redeveloped convent in Booterstown, County Dublin that combines the best of both approaches.

Woodspec -First Timber Specifiers Guide Produced in Ireland