Last week's Better Building conference in Dublin heard from experts speaker on the present and future of the construction industry in Ireland. Topics at this year’s conference pushed the building industry to think beyond energy efficiency and consider full life cycle costs of materials, transportation issues, and living buildings.

The Passive House Institute has announced the finalists for this year’s Passive House Award. The winners, across six categories, will be announced on 25 April at the International Passive House Conference in Aachen, Germany.

The UK’s Passivhaus Trust will hold a conference on large scale passive house developments on 30 April in Glasgow.

In the new issue of Passive House Plus, architect David Hughes argues that instead of investing tens of billions of euro upgrading its electricity infrastructure and building wind farms, Ireland should instead invest the money in the energy retrofit of its building stock.

That’s the question I want to ask today. I’m talking mostly about the situation in Ireland, because it’s the one I’m more familiar with things over here — particularly with regards to building regulations. But the same might apply to the UK.

AIB has announced the launched of a €350m “new homes development fund” that it says will support the construction of new homes in Dublin, Cork and Galway. The bank is inviting applications from “borrowers who can demonstrate prior experience in residential development”.

The Passive House Institute has announced the results of monitoring of a passive-certified swimming facility in Lünen, Germany, and says its analysis shows that the "savings in terms of energy consumption, for heating as well as for electricity, are substantial compared with other swimming pools".

.A range of newly certified passive house components were presented in January at the Deubaukom trade fair in Essen, Germany, including windows designed for use in the arctic and northern Scandanvia.  

Check out this video below of Passive House Institute founder Prof Wolfgang Feist speaking at last year's See The Light conference in Dublin, which was organised by the Passive House Association of Ireland.

The Passive House Institute has announced the launch of a 3D model interface that allows for the graphic input of energy related design data.