• Energy Research
• Irish Research Council close
• 11. Sustainability close
• 12. Responsible consumption close

Abstract Harnessing solar energy to provide for the thermal needs of buildings is one of the most promising solutions to the global energy issue. Exploiting the additional surface area provided by the building’s facade can significantly increase the solar energy output. Developing a range of integrated and adaptable products that do not significantly affect the building’s aesthetics is vital to enabling the building integrated solar thermal market to expand and prosper. This work reviews and evaluates solar thermal facades in terms of the standard collector type, which they are based on, and their component make-up. Daily efficiency models are presented, based on a combination of the Hottel Whillier Bliss model and finite element simulation. Novel and market available solar thermal systems are also reviewed and evaluated using standard evaluation methods, based on experimentally determined parameters ISO 9806. Solar thermal collectors integrated directly into the facade benefit from the additional wall insulation at the back; displaying higher efficiencies then an identical collector offset from the facade. Unglazed solar thermal facades with high capacitance absorbers (e.g. concrete) experience a shift in peak maximum energy yield and display a lower sensitivity to ambient conditions than the traditional metallic based unglazed collectors. Glazed solar thermal facades, used for high temperature applications (domestic hot water), result in overheating of the building’s interior which can be reduced significantly through the inclusion of high quality wall insulation. For low temperature applications (preheating systems), the cheaper unglazed systems offer the most economic solution. The inclusion of brighter colour for the glazing and darker colour for the absorber shows the lowest efficiency reductions (

Large organizations play a key role in sustainability transitions through their systems of production and consumption and their influence on wider society. Recognizing the uniqueness and complexity of structure-agency relations in organizations, this paper uses the example of food provisioning to compare the sustainability potential of eight national and multinational organizations located in Ireland. By introducing the novel concept of ‘alteration spaces’ to describe specific intra-organizational structure-agency constellations and their dynamics over time, we question existing interventionist views of organizational change. We argue these tend to overstate extra-organizational impulses for change while paying insufficient attention to organizational culture and committed individuals as potential sustainability advocates within organizations. This, in turn, facilitates a reconceptualization of individual agency as embedded within an organizational context, thereby challenging dominant understandings that disregard the potential of established organizations to initiate intra-organizational changes that shape and reflect sustainability transitions.

The comparison of the Ecological Footprint and its counterpart (i.e. biocapacity) allow for a classification of the world's countries as ecological creditors (Ecological Footprint lower than biocapacity) or debtors (Ecological Footprint higher than biocapacity). This classification is a national scale assessment on an annual time scale that provides a view of the ecological assets appropriated by the local population versus the natural ecological endowment of a country. We show that GDP per capita over a certain threshold is related with the worsening of the footprint balance in countries classified as ecological debtors. On the other hand, this correlation is lost when ecological creditor nations are considered. There is evidence that governments and investors from high GDP countries are playing a crucial role in impacting the environment at the global scale which is significantly affecting the geography of sustainability and preventing equal opportunities for development. In particular, international market dynamics and the concentration of economic power facilitate the transfer of biocapacity related to “land grabbing”, i.e. large scale acquisition of agricultural land. This transfer mainly occurs from low to high GDP countries, regardless of the actual need of foreign biocapacity, as expressed by the national footprint balance. A first estimation of the amount of biocapacity involved in this phenomenon is provided in this paper in order to better understand its implications on global sustainability and national and international land use policy.

Heat transformers are closed cycle thermodynamic systems which allow waste heat energy to be recycled by increasing its temperature. TAHTs (Triple stage heat transformers) are capable of increasing the temperature of supplied heat by up to ∼140 °C. This paper attempts to analyse the industrial attractiveness of such cycles by conducting a case study on the potential installation of a TAHT in a small Irish oil refinery, examining various different natural gas price scenarios. The choice of waste heat energy being recycled is shown to be pivotal to the success or failure of the installation. TAHTs are demonstrated to show most benefits when applied to waste heat streams with large quantities of latent heat. The usage of more efficient and cost effective equipment instead of conventional shell and tube heat exchangers within the system dramatically increases the potential economic return from the heat transformer. At the present gas price, the capital cost of (conventional) equipment is too high to make this investment financially attractive for the current industrial example, with excessive payback periods predicted. However a return to natural gas price levels observed in 2008 and 2009 would make the unit economically viable.

Significant volumes of research over the past four decades has sought to elucidate the social, infrastructural, economic, and human health effects of climate change induced surface flooding. To date, epidemiological and public health studies of flooding events have focused on mental health effects, vector-borne diseases, and infectious enteric disease due to floodwater contact (i.e. typically low consumption rates). The inherent nature of groundwater (i.e. out of sight, out of mind) and the widely held belief that aquifers represent a pristine source of drinking water due to natural attenuation may represent the "perfect storm" causing direct consumption of relatively large volumes of surface flood-contaminated groundwater. Accordingly, the current study sought to systematically identify and synthesize all available peer-reviewed literature pertaining to the nexus between surface flooding, groundwater contamination and human gastroenteric outcomes. Just 14 relevant studies were found to have been published during the period 1980-2017, thus highlighting the fact that this potentially significant source of climate-related exposure to environmental infection has remained understudied to date. Studies differed significantly in terms of type and data reporting procedures, making it difficult to discern clear trends and patterns. Approximately 945 confirmed cases of flood-related enteric disease were examined across studies; these concurred with almost 10,000 suspected cases, equating to approximately 20 suspected cases per confirmed case. As such, no regional, national or global estimates are available for the human gastrointestinal health burden of flood-related groundwater contamination. In light of the demonstrable public health significance of the concurrent impacts of groundwater susceptibility and climate change exacerbation, strategies to increase awareness about potential sources of contamination and motivate precautionary behaviour (e.g. drinking water testing and treatment, supply interruptions) are necessary. Mainstreaming climate adaptation concerns into planning policies will also be necessary to reduce human exposure to waterborne sources of enteric infection.

{"references": ["Lienhard, J., Alpermann, H., Gengnagel, C., & Knippers, J. (2013).\nActive bending, a review on structures where bending is used as a selfformation\nprocess. International Journal of Space Structures, 28(3-4),\n187-196.", "Happold, E., & Liddell, W. (1975). Timber lattice roof for the\nMannheim Bundesgartenschau. The Structural Engineer, 53(3), 99-135.", "Harris, R., Romer, J., Kelly, O., & Johnson, S. (2003). Design and\nconstruction of the Downland Gridshell. Building Research &\nInformation, 31(6), 427-454. doi: 10.1080/0961321032000088007", "Harris, R., Haskins, S., & Roynon, J. (2008). The Savill Garden\ngridshell: design and construction. The Structural Engineer, 28.", "Harris, R., Roynon, J., & Happold, B. (2008). The savill garden\ngridshell: Design and construction. The Structural Engineer, 86, 27-34", "Paoli, C. C. A. (2007). Past and future of grid shell structures.\nMassachusetts Institute of Technology.", "Douthe, C., Baverel, O., & Caron, J. (2006). Form-finding of a grid shell\nin composite materials. Journal-International association for shell and\nSpatial Structures, 150, 53.", "McConville Wellburn (2011) Friends of the Earth Scotland (online),\navailable: http://www.foe-scotland.org.uk/ (accessed 16/01/2014).", "Toussaint, M. H. (2007). A Design Tool for Timber Gridshells: The\ndevelopment of a Grid Generation Tool. Msc thesis Delft University of\nTechnoloy, online http://homepage.tudelft.nl/p3r3s/MSc_projecs/\nreportToussaint. pdf.\n[10] Lienhard, J. (2014) Bending-active structures: form-finding strategies\nusing elastic deformation in static and kinetic systems and the structural\npotentials therein, unpublished thesis Universit\u00e4tsbibliothek der\nUniversit\u00e4t Stuttgart.\n[11] Ashby, M. F. (1999) Materials selection in mechanical design, Boston,\nMA: Butterworth-Heinemann.\n[12] EN338 (2009) 'Structural Timber - Strength Classes',\n[13] Institution of Structural, E. and Technology, T. (2007) Manual for the\ndesign of timber building structures to Eurocode 5, London: The\nInstitution of Structural Engineers.\n[14] EN 1995-1-1:2004 'Eurocode 5: Design of timber structures - Part 1-1:\nGeneral - Common rules and rules for buildings',\n[15] EN14358 (2006) 'Timber structures - Calculation of characteristic 5-\npercentile values and acceptance criteria for a sample', National\nStandards Authority of Ireland,\n[16] EN789 (2004) 'Timber structures - Test methods - Determination of\nmechanical properties of wood based panels', National Standards\nAuthority of Ireland,\n[17] Collins and Cosgrove unpublished\n[18] TECO. (2011, 14 Oct 2014). OSB Guide. History of OSB, from\nhttp://osbguide.tecotested.com/osbhistory"]} To determine the potential of a low cost Irish engineered timber product to replace high cost solid timber for use in bending active structures such as gridshells a single Irish engineered timber product in the form of orientated strand board (OSB) was selected. A comparative study of OSB and solid timber was carried out to determine the optimum properties that make a material suitable for use in gridshells. Three parameters were identified to be relevant in the selection of a material for gridshells. These three parameters are the strength to stiffness ratio, the flexural stiffness of commercially available sections, and the variability of material and section properties. It is shown that when comparing OSB against solid timber, OSB is a more suitable material for use in gridshells that are at the smaller end of the scale and that have tight radii of curvature. Typically, for solid timber materials, stiffness is used as an indicator for strength and engineered timber is no different. Thus, low flexural stiffness would mean low flexural strength. However, when it comes to bending active gridshells, OSB offers a significant advantage. By the addition of multiple layers, an increased section size is created, thus endowing the structure with higher stiffness and higher strength from initial low stiffness and low strength materials while still maintaining tight radii of curvature. This allows OSB to compete with solid timber on large scale gridshells. Additionally, a preliminary sustainability study using a set of sustainability indicators was carried out to determine the relative sustainability of building a large-scale gridshell in Ireland with a primary focus on economic viability but a mention is also given to social and environmental aspects. For this, the Savill garden gridshell in the UK was used as the functional unit with the sustainability of the structural roof skeleton constructed from UK larch solid timber being compared with the same structure using Irish OSB. Albeit that the advantages of using commercially available OSB in a bending active gridshell are marginal and limited to specific gridshell applications, further study into an optimised engineered timber product is merited.

Cooling demand in buildings is globally increasing, therefore developing more efficient cooling systems is important for the sustainability of European cities. Directive 2012/27/EU of the European Parliament and of the council on energy efficiency states: “Member States should carry out a comprehensive assessment of the potential for high-efficiency cogeneration and district heating and cooling”. The EU project INDIGO is investigating this issue considering also the economic efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources. In a district cooling system different kinds of cooling production can be combined. E.g., the use of absorption chillers with waste heat or through the solar cooling or the use of free cooling (generally the heat is rejected to seas, lakes, rivers or waterways) offer the possibility of a more sustainable way of cooling. Controlling those systems in an efficient way is a complex problem (consider that the cooling demand is much more difficult to predict than the heat demand, particularly the peaks, and sources such as the solar energy and the waste heat are not predetermined by the designers). The main results of INDIGO will be the development of: - predictive controllers (responsible for obtaining the HVAC systems set-points and based on component dynamic thermos-fluid models, some of them also including embedded self-learning algorithms); - system management algorithms (focused on energy efficiency maximization or energy cost minimization); - an open-source planning tool (based on design and performance parameters as well as simulation and optimisation results; LCA framework will be used as a method for both economic feasibility and climate impact assessment). To validate the results, the consortium is analysing case studies, both through energy modelling and through on-site observations and measurements. The present paper focuses mainly on the development of dynamic energy models and on their use in the context of the project.