High performance buildings essential for climate and quality of life

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With the theme “Metrics of Success: Securing Real Progress Toward Sustainable Buildings”, the second annual summit of Enniscorthy Forum’s Buildings Action Coalition (BAC) brought together an international mix of policy experts, building practitioners and officials from both sides of the Atlantic to explore how to decarbonize buildings and create more resilient, liveable communities.

Held in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford on 8-10 April, the summit was designed to advance the agenda of the Buildings and Climate Global Forum, led by France and the UN Environment Programme in March 2024 in Paris, and its Chaillot Declaration.

In his opening remarks, Ireland’s housing minister Darragh O’Brien said: “The overall objective of the Enniscorthy Forum’s Buildings Action Coalition, to achieve high performance in buildings and the built environment rapidly and at global scale, strikes at the heart of the critical challenges we face. It is essential that all these efforts lead to improved quality of life –improved health, better economic, social, and environmental resilience, social justice, better levels of comfort, affordability, indoor and broader urban air quality. We are pleased to see Ireland take a leading role in advancing these principles globally.”

150 participants joined the summit either in person or online to consider issues and opportunities related to buildings and the built environment. The summit set forth a range of policies and approaches that are being deployed to advance high performance buildings and insisted on the need for cross-cutting education and training. Notably, leading universities presented their vision for educating the next-generation professionals needed for sustainability in buildings, and international centres of excellence shared the training approaches they apply to improve the industrial ecosystems that deliver high performance in buildings.

The summit featured case studies in collaborative leadership from Brussels and Washington DC as capital cities, and from Pittsburgh and Glasgow as cities delivering quality of life in a post-industrial context.

Two specific topics, using the integration of buildings and grids as a bridge to the future and addressing the growing energy demands of data centres, were the subject of much discussion. Integrating buildings and grids efficiently offers improved energy services for buildings, an important source of grid stability, and an opportunity to integrate intermittent renewables into the energy mix.

One of the key objectives under the vision of the Buildings Action Coalition is to change construction industry culture. Enniscorthy Forum is undertaking to achieve that shift in culture through its networks of academia and centres of excellence, and engagement with youth organisations and use of the creative and performing arts to both teach and inspire young people on the principles of high performance. The summit launched a fifth pillar of the Buildings Action Coalition, the Youth Movement and Social Action League (YSL), and the Enniscorthy Forum signed letters of intent with the Youth Democracy Movement (YDM), the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), the Organising Bureau of European School Student Unions (OBESSU), the Commonwealth Students Association (CSA), and the Irish Second-Level Students Union (ISSU).

In the closing segment of the summit, students from New York City working with Passive House for Everyone! and the city of New York presented an inspiring set of art, music, and demonstration projects, notably an ice cream challenge that was conceived to minimize melting by proper design.

Delegates visited Ireland’s first passive house office building, Senan House, for a presentation of technology innovations from Trinity College Dublin’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centre, before signing in new members of BAC at Enniscorthy Castle. In addition to the letters of intent signed with the YSL, new members included Wicklow-based passive house stalwarts MosArt and Bulgarian energy efficiency centre EnEffect.

Closing the event, Enniscorthy Forum CEO Barbara-Anne Murphy said: “Getting buildings and the built environment right is the one thing that can deliver important, impactful results in a relevant timeframe. We don’t need to wait for nuclear fusion – we have the technology, we have the capital, and we have the know-how to make a real difference in the performance of buildings.”

The non-profit Enniscorthy Forum was established to support the United Nations’ sustainable development agenda, focusing on buildings and the built environment, energy, diplomacy, health, and education. The forum and its partners work in collaboration with UNEP to promote and demonstrate the transformative benefits of high-performance buildings and to ensure take-up of best practice methods in planning, design, and construction across the world.

The Building Action Coalition will continue to press on the range of its activities and initiatives in the areas of best practice dissemination, communication and deployment of high-performance principles, education, training, and research, and development of case studies as proofs of concept. Coalition members provide hour-long webinars on the second Wednesday of each month to explore and explain novel approaches they have developed. The first regional summit is being organized with a BAC member, The Energy Coalition. It will take place in Autumn 2024 in Los Angeles, California. The third BAC summit will take place in summer 2025.