Opinion

Eamon Ryan, former Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources (2007-2011)

Ambitious companies in the Irish sustainable building sector should look to the US, says Century Homes founder Gerry McCaughey. As chief executive of LA-based green building business consultancy Infineco, McCaughey is witnessing first-hand how the land of opportunity is waking up to green construction.

Brian Dowd, ESB’s products and services manager, talks about the company’s new energy strategy and the launch of the next phase of their Halo programme.

With an economy fuelled by a government approach to planning that many people equate to a road building and house building free for all, it should come as no surprise that quality of life suffers

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.

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 this adapted extract from his new book Natural Building: A Guide to Materials and Techniques, seminal eco architect Professor Tom Woolley outlines some of the reasons why natural building is necessary.

In issue 2 we reported on an innovative new energy bike scheme being implemented in Sligo. Its instigator, Wilhelm Bodewigs, got in touch to tell us about an interesting Tram system proposal for the county