Jeff Colley is the editor of Passive House Plus. He won the Green Leader award at the 2010 Green Awards for his advocacy work on the inclusion of energy ratings in property advertising, and a proposal to finance energy upgrades via utility bills.
He established Construct Ireland (for a sustainable future), Ireland's pioneering sustainable building magazine, in 2003. The magazine evolved into Passive House Plus in late 2012, the world's first English language magazine focused on passive house, as well as other aspects of sustainable building.
He is also a founder of Éasca, (the Environmental and Sustainable Construction Association) , an organisation set up to develop and promote a membership of approved companies offering genuinely sustainable solutions.
He writes a regular column for the Sunday Times, and has authored, co-authored and contributed to articles on sustainable building for numerous newspapers including the Irish Times, The Sunday Business Post, the Irish Examiner & the Sunday Tribune.
#BuildingLife Series: Director at CORA Consulting Engineers, John Casey
In each edition, Passive Plus Plus profiles leaders in construction and architecture who have endorsed the Irish Green Building Council’s call to address the environmental impacts of buildings across their entire lifecycle.
Passive breakthrough
In September Cairn Homes lit the fuse on a passive house explosion, publishing a position paper on passive house and announcing the construction of nearly 1,800 apartments to the standard. But what’s behind the company’s bold move?
Emma Stone show puts passive house up in lights
Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction. And sometimes strange but breathtaking fiction subverts reality.
In issue 47 we took a break from our normal approach to Big Picture, with good reason: passive house playing a starring role in an extraordinary US TV show.
Six of one
The climate emergency demands that we minimise the energy we use to operate buildings, as well as the energy we use to construct new buildings, where new buildings are needed. A Passive House Association of Ireland-commissioned analysis may start to shed some light on the embodied carbon impact that different build methods can have.
Up to 11
In issue 38 of Passive House Plus we published an in-depth assessment comparing the build specs including five wall types to a typical Irish house. To enable the industry to fairly compare a broader range of build options, we now expand that analysis with the addition of four timber frame wall types and two insulated concrete formwork systems
Flat pack on track
What do you get if you cross a quantum physicist, a forensic accountant, a merchant, an engineer and a software-whizz-kid architect? A terrible punchline presumably. But as Jeff Colley discovered on a trip to Sussex, you get something not to be laughed at: a collaborative approach that may be about to unlock a scalable, highly sustainable, circular economy-proof, flat pack build approach.
Hollywood star on 50 years of eco activism
Actor Ed Begley Junior is one of America’s best-known and longest-standing environmental activists. Fresh from lighting up our screens in the final season of Better Call Saul, Begley spoke to Passive House Plus about the roots of his activism, and what drives him on in the face of such adversity.
Paul Doran remembered
Editor Jeff Colley remembers Paul Doran, one of Ireland's foremost builders, who has tragically passed away.
One in four homes failing to meet NZEB
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.
Cavity wall builds can meet RIBA carbon targets, new analysis suggests
A detailed analysis of the embodied carbon of six common build types has indicated that dwellings built with business-as-usual build specs of cavity wall construction and strip foundations may be able to meet the revised embodied carbon targets for dwellings in RIBA’s 2030 Climate Challenge.