Open Source Content Management

The British government is considering a voucher scheme to tackle fuel poverty in light of increasing energy costs, reports BBC News Online.

According to the report the government is concerned that rising energy costs are having a negative effect on poorer households. The report also notes that alongside sharp increases in energy costs

Electricity is easy to understand, right? It's generated by burning something somewhere or maybe from sunlight or wind, and then races down the wires just in time for you to turn the lights on.

Not quite. Electrical power is so ubiquitous that we don't really feel the need to understand it – and in an ideal world we wouldn't need to – but in today's energy conscious

The online edition of the bosses' favourite newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, does its bit for sustainable architecture with short profiles of the architects who add 'sex appeal' to sustainable buildings.

 

The five architects chosen include Norman Foster, who is working on developing

Never knowingly left off any bandwagon that happens to be trundling past, Wired magazine, or at least its internet arm, presents a gallery of eight eco gadgets for the home and the neighbourhood.

Among the better ideas are wastewater turbines, LED lighting and a fascinating, for Constuct Ireland readers, plan to make eco-friendly

Sustainability website Ecoble notes seven brilliant renewable energy technologies that may not be all that they seem.

 

 

 

Ron Oxburgh, perhaps better known as Lord Ernest Ronald Oxburgh, Baron Oxburgh, KBE, FRS, PhD - or perhaps not - says that environmentalist George Monbiot's campaign against biofuel has "gone too far."

Writing in the Guardian Oxburgh, a former non-executive director of Royal Dutch Shell

A new web site, Climate Debate Daily has been launched to cool down the debate about global warming.

 

Co-managed by Dennis Dutton, the man behind the excellent literary and intellectual portal Arts and Letters Daily, Climate Change Daily promises to become an essential resource on the subject.

Bank of America Tower, to be located at One Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan is a US$1 billion project that has been designed to be one of the most highly efficient and ecologically friendly tall buildings in the world. The building, currently under construction, is expected to be complete in 2008.

Jason Walsh got in touch with Cook + Fox Architects in New York, designers of the Bank of America Tower to see how the practice plans to square the circle of designing an environmentally sound high-rise building.

With the building of a new house in Greystones, County Wicklow, Ireland has become only the third country to feature the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. Jason Walsh visited the site to see if Wright's designs might just represent the kind of thinking required in today's energy-conscious buildings.

Atop a hill in New Ross, County Wexford, is a beacon for sustainability in large-scale developments, which draws extensively from across the palette of sustainable building options to achieve a building that is notable not just aesthetically, but also in health, energy and environmental impact terms. Jason Walsh visited the new Solar Croi spa, part of the Brandon House Hotel, Health Club and Spa, to find out more.