From the Construct Ireland archives

The development of Coppinger Court, a high density apartment complex on Popes Quay, Cork City, has been broadly received with a warm response, picking up awards in 2004 including the RIAI Best Sustainable Building award.

As fears grow amongst climate scientists that the world may be close to reaching a tipping point leading to runaway global warming, there’s a growing recognition that the forthcoming UN climate conference in Copenhagen must deliver dramatic and binding targets to cut carbon. According to Richard Douthwaite, the talks are unlikely to deliver sufficiently meaningful action.

Richard Douthwaite explains how inadequate conventional energy generation is and reveals the potential that combined heat and power & energy service companies can offer.

As we all know, Ireland is currently paying the price for the inability of its political and corporate leaders to take seriously the warning signs of an economy where property investment and borrowing generally got out of control. Looking at policy and commercial investment plans for energy supply and distribution, Richard Douthwaite asks, are the decision makers showing an alarmingly similar attitude to evident gas supply threats?

Any building, no matter how cold and draughty, no matter how remote, can be improved to world-class energy performance, as an upgraded and extended Donegal cottage dating back to the 1800s proves.

A sustainable energy project in north Tipperary has the potential to create a pioneering green community – buildings are getting energy makeovers, grants are available for renewables and the ecovillage at Cloughjordan is under construction. But getting householders in the area to go green is still proving a hard sell, as Lenny Antonelli reports

Intended as a landmark not only architecturally, Áras Chill Dara sets an example for large scale sustainable building, as Construct Ireland’s Jason Walsh found out.

An energy conscious renovation and extension in south Dublin breathes new life into a typical semi detached home — the house is now wrapped with external insulation and boasts breathable and ecological materials too.

No matter how energy efficient a building method is, constructing a house from scratch will always cause some damage to the environment - but what if a building material could absorb more carbon than it causes to be released over its life cycle? Lenny Antonelli visits a hempcrete house in Co. Down that seeks to trial this innovative method of building

Solearth partner & Éasca board member Mike Haslam profiles five inspiring English and US projects that share a similarly considered green design approach.