Consumer retrofit study, timber high rise & geothermal electricity

A quick round up of interesting stories you or may not have seen:

According to SEAI, the organisation is approving 1,000 Home Energy Saving scheme grants a week, at an average of €2,900. Press release and full report (down the bottom) are here.

Permission sought for Ireland's first geothermal energy electricity generation facility. But Richard Tol is skeptical.

Work on Dublin's Metro North to begin in April

Profile of a nine story timber-frame apartment building, including a time-lapse video showing its construction. Construct Ireland previously profiled Ireland's largest timber-frame building, the Navan Credit Union.

Beetlecrete: making use of timber that's been infested by the pine beetle.

Article and audio report on an office built out of shipping containers, which seem to be growing in popularity in the US. How long before an Irish building uses one?

Is green building causing a "real estate revolution" in the US?

Britain is banning inefficient boilers

The New York Times has an in depth feature on passive houses

The Infrastructurist asks why we (or more specifically the US, in this case) are still so afraid of nuclear power?

Some cool aerial photos of urban sprawl in the US (they're after the first few aerial photos of prisons)

The world's biggest offshore windfarm has been activated in the North Sea