A delegation of world leaders in sustainable building and energy visited Wexford early on 10 May to discuss plans to locate Ireland’s first nearly zero energy building (nZEB) training centre near Enniscorthy.

Three leading firms operating in the sustainable building and passive house sectors have joined forces to launch Kiss House, a new concept in architect-designed, turnkey housing. Kiss House is available in two-bed, three-bed and four-bed options, all built to the passive house standard.

Blowerproof liquid air-tight membrane has been certified by the British Board of Agrément. Blowerproof has been used widely across Europe for many years as a proven and effective method of achieving high levels of airtightness in many different buildings, and on a wide range of substrates.

Europe’s first purpose-built ‘3D textbook’ building has opened at the Rediscovery Centre in the old boiler house at Ballymun, which recently won the Green Building Award at the 2017 Green Awards.

Changing habits was a big theme at the 21st International Passive House Conference, which was held in Vienna on 28 and 29 April, with leading climate researcher Helga Kromp-Kolb telling delegates that adopting new habits and sharing resources fairly were both crucial to tackling climate change.

Crawley Borough Council’s first passive house development, designed by Accredited Passivhaus Design (APD), has been completed and certified to the passive house standard.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the Viessmann Group’s new technological research and development centre in Allendorf, Germany on 12 April. The €50 million investment by Viessmann, one of the leading international manufacturers of heating, industrial and refrigeration systems, sets a milestone in interdisciplinary development and innovation, the company said.

On 13 June, in an address about retrofit policy to the joint conference of the Sustainable Traditional Buildings Alliance and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, I suggested that the UK retrofit industry is dangerously incompetent, and that is why we need to implement the Each Home Counts industry review. Little did I know that in less than twenty-four hours those words would come back to haunt me in the most horrific way, writes Dr Peter Rickaby.

A major research project by the Passive House Institute has found that heat energy consumption of the passive house district of Bahnstadt, in the city of Heidelberg, Germany, is roughly one-third that of conventional housing developments.

SEAI will host Ireland’s first ever deep retrofit conference at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin on 21 June.