Irish news - passivehouseplus.co.uk

Passive House Plus editor and publisher Jeff Colley’s TEDx talk on the passive house standard is now available to view online.

The Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland (RIAI) has launched its 2030 Climate Challenge, calling for urgent action to be taken by architects and the wider construction industry to tackle the climate emergency.

Ireland’s new climate action plan, which was published on Thursday 4 November, contains the country’s first official targets for limiting the embodied carbon of construction materials. 

Coventry University research has found that 40 per cent of primary school classrooms examined in a study did not have an adequate ventilation rate to combat the spread of Covid-19.

A new demonstration house currently being erected in Glasgow in advance of this year’s COP26 climate conference will showcase build systems and methods for achieving zero carbon housing to the world.

The UK and Ireland’s oil heating industry says it has taken a “major step forward” in the use of biofuels in domestic oil boilers, with early tests concluding that hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) works in virtually all existing oil boilers.

Ahead of the Built Environment Summit (28-29 October) and COP26 (1-12 November), the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and Architects Declare have published a report demonstrating the critical role the sector must play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

In the #BuildingLife ambassador spotlight series, Passive House Plus is profiling leaders who have endorsed the Irish Green Building Council’s call to address the environmental impacts of buildings across their life-cycle..

The Department of Housing has come under criticism for draft guidelines which would prevent local authorities from setting sustainable building targets for buildings as a planning condition, with the passive house standard and low carbon cement directly referenced.

The government has launched new guidelines from the Environmental Protection Agency aimed at greening public procurement.

The Passive House Institute celebrated the low energy standard’s 30th birthday at the 25th International Passive House Conference in September. Around seven hundred participants registered for the conference, which mostly took place online due to Covid.

A comparison between two pairs of households in Switzerland suggests that people do not reliably compensate for lack of mechanical ventilation with more window opening.

A new analysis of the exposure of London households to indoor pollutants highlights “systematic inequalities” in exposure, overwhelmingly driven by factors beyond the control of those people worst affected.

Almost a quarter of new nearly zero energy building (NZEB) homes may be non-compliant with Part L of the regulations, new analysis by Passive House Plus has revealed.

The winners of the international Passive House Award will be announced on Friday 10 September as part of the 25th International Passive House Conference, which is fully available online. Tickets to the conference are still available.

While the Irish government is delivering CO2 monitors to schools to help prevent the spread of Covid-19, and some European regions have mandated the use of such monitors in all buildings open to the public, the UK has yet to introduce such measures and has removed the requirement for mask-wearing in schools.

Passive House Plus editor Jeff Colley will be speaking at the TEDx Tralee event on 15 October.

South West College’s new Erne Campus building in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, is the world’s largest, and the first educational building, to be certified to the passive house premium standard, the Passive House Institute has confirmed.

The passive house standard is celebrating its 30th birthday this year. The world’s first passive houses were built in Darmstadt, Germany in 1991.

On June 8, 2021 Passive House Plus, in association with Farrat, chaired a hugely informative roundtable on thermal breaks. If you missed it, the video can now be viewed online.

Munster Joinery has published the first environmental product declaration (EPD) for a window under the Irish EPD system.

Irish low carbon cement company Ecocem has announced €22.5 million in equity investment from Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) and Breakthrough Energy Ventures-Europe (BEV-E), venture capital funds that are part Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy coalition, which seeks to accelerate the global drive towards net zero carbon emissions. 

Engineers Ireland has announced the launch of a new Women in Engineering group.

In the first of our new #BuildingLife ambassador spotlight series, Passive House Plus is profiling leaders who have endorsed the Irish Green Building Council’s call to address the environmental impacts of buildings across their life cycle, starting with Francis-Noel Duffy TD for Dublin South West and Green Party’s spokesperson on housing.

Home Building Finance Ireland (HBFI) has launched a new green loan product offering a discount of up to 0.5 per cent on loans to home builders for developments certified with the Irish Green Building Council's Home Performance Index.

The government has announced a new €45 million programme of investment in the retrofifit of local authority housing. This includes an initial investment of €35m for the retrofitting of 1,293 homes, plus an additional €10m to be allocated to local authorities who demonstrate an ability to complete additional works this year.

Technological University Dublin has announced the launch of a new four-year degree programme in sustainable timber technology.

Residential retrofits must ensure ventilation is carefully considered in order to avoid an increase in radon gas levels, researchers at NUI Galway in Ireland have found.

Heat pumps rise, PV falls and fabric stands still.

Nine out of ten readers of Passive House Plus have made decisions on building or upgrading projects in response to articles in the magazine, according to the results of a survey of readers of the magazine’s Irish edition.