From the Construct Ireland archives

Conventional wisdom dictates that higher construction costs — for instance to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions — would either squeeze developers’ profit margins or increase house prices. Tom Dunne, Head of DIT’s School of Real Estate and Construction Economics, reveals how misguided this view could be...

As interest in sustainable building continues to escalate, Construct Ireland is increasingly unearthing buildings that betray an ambition to break new ground under a plethora of green criteria. John Hearne visited one such house in County Louth, and found a project driven by passive house and BER scale-topping ambitions combined with on-site energy and water supply strategies and a commitment to the use of green materials

Beauty is only skin deep, or so goes the cliché, but is there more to 'grace' in a building than its exterior? Jason Walsh visited Rathnew, County Wicklow, to see how an ordinary office building was being transformed into a paragon of sustainability and spoke to two of the building's designers and occupants, architect Tomás Ó Leary and engineer Mark O'Brien

The HARP database allows Building Energy Rating assessors to enter real performance data for heating appliances when calculating Building Energy Ratings rather than low default scores - but few renewable appliances are listed, and the industry appears confused and deterred by the application process. Lenny Antonelli investigates.

A new public park on the northside of Dublin combines wind power and sustainable water management with environmentally sound materials and strategies to boost biodiversity, making it a standard-bearer in urban design. Lenny Antonelli visited the site

Planning ahead for Ireland’s electricity supply is by no means a simple matter, given the range of unprecedented issues that are coming to the fore.  Massive cuts in emissions must be achieved, whilst decisive action is required to ensure adequate supply of electricity at a time when usage is spiraling. Richard Douthwaite explains the balance that Ireland must achieve between efficient local generation and usage and ensuring optimal interconnection to global renewable electricity supply

A recent study instigated by the American Environmental Protection Agency has identified indoor air quality as one of the top five urgent environmental risks to public health.

Everyone knows that the cheapest way of doing something can turn out to be very expensive in the end. The decision to make Ireland ’s electricity system so reliant on gas is about to bear this principle out. By Richard Douthwaite.

As fossil fuel prices rise, the need for energy efficiency in achieving both is increasingly leading Irish people to an approach which combines both ventilation and heating,

Building a visitor centre at such an evocative site as the Cliffs of Moher, one of Ireland’s greatest tourist attractions must have been something of a challenge. By attempting to cater for visitors, the centre could so easily have ruined the rugged, barren landscape which makes people visit in the first place. John Hearne visited the new interpretive centre to discover a building which addresses this problem by becoming part of the landscape, whilst using eco technologies to reduce the building’s strain on the broader environment.