Our members
MAIN GOALS - GENERAL ACTIVITIES - FIELD OF EXPERTISES
The Enniscorthy Forum works to support the United Nations sustainable development agenda with initiatives on Buildings, Energy, Diplomacy, Health, and Education. Its Buildings project, the Buildings Action Coalition (BAC), aims to inspire and harness ambition at the community level, empowering partners for action in industry practice, policy, education, training, and workforce development. The BAC supports partners in knowledge sharing and collaborative projects capable of dramatic impact and promoting investments that “move the needle” on decarbonization, resilience, and quality of life. Specific efforts include:
- Building-Grid Integration -- for community level performance optimisation of in developed and developing worlds.
- Brussels-Washington DC Collaboration: on Brussels’ unique building performance leadership and DC’s learning from the experience in Brussels.
- Data Centres: Government, industry and university taskforce on decarbonisation amid exponential growth in energy intensive data management.
- Retrofit: An industry, university, and “action hubs” collaboration on financially viable retrofit strategies to develop best practices.
- Global Supply Chain: to ensure the availability of and wide access to the materials and equipment necessary for construction and maintenance of decarbonised/sustainable buildings.
- Africa Outreach: Belgian & Penn State Global Building Network effort to develop resources for voluntary deployment of sustainable buildings continent-wide.
- Curricula Transformation: University-led collaboration to put decarbonisation practices, materials, designs and management at the heart of education.
- Case Studies and Digital Learning: Industry and “action hub” collaboration to develop and curate an advanced library on design, construction and management of decarbonised buildings and built environments.
ACTIVITY RELATED TO LOW GHG AND ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND RESILIENT BUILDINGS
The Mission of the Enniscorthy Forum's Buildings Action Coalition implement key principles of sustainable buildings through changes in practice, policy, education, training, and workforce development.
Buildings must be:
- Holistically designed, resourced, delivered and operated for sustainability & resilience
- Integrated with the built and natural environment for optimized performance
- Aligned with an equitably distributed healthy quality of life
- Monitored for performance and improved with emerging knowledge
- Leveraged to create employment, opportunity, and prosperity on a broad scale
- Supported by a culture of investment in sustainability, innovation, and improvement
- The activities of the Building Action Coalition are coordinated by the Enniscorthy Forum to support the membership and dramatically strengthen the impact of their activities.
Activities:
- Communicate: disseminate a vision, knowledge, and opportunities for policy makers, the building delivery chain industry, and end users.
- Collaborate: engage all stakeholders in the building sector to deliver superior outcomes.
- Implement: in-the-field action with reinforced and measurable impact.
- Research: to create and deploy knowledge required for building transformation.
- Educate: transform curricula for tomorrow for youth and workforce professionals.
Projects and Activities include, for example from a much longer list:
- Building-Grid Integration: University-industry collaboration on strategy for community level performance optimization of decarbonisation and quality of life improvements in developed and developing worlds – anchored at provost level in Penn State and Carnegie Mellon universities with immediate expansion paths available in the EU
- Data Centres: Government, industry and university taskforce to address a challenge for effective decarbonisation: exponential growth of data and energy intensive data management facilities
- threatens to eclipse progress in decarbonising all other buildings
- Africa Outreach: Africa combines sparse resources with vast expected growth in building stock over
- the next several decades. The Belgian Embassy in Washington DC is teaming with Penn State’s Global Building Network to develop resources supporting voluntary deployment of sustainable buildings across the continent.
- Retrofit: An industry, university, and “action hubs” collaboration to establish pathways to financially viable retrofit strategies to transform the developed world’s existing building stock
- Curricula Transformation: University and “action hub” collaboration to put decarbonised practices, materials, designs and management at the heart of education on buildings from high school to community/trades college and university levels
- Case Studies and Digital Learning: Industry and “action hub” collaboration to curate an advanced website library on design, construction and management of decarbonised buildings
- Global Supply Chain: “Action hub” led initiative supported by multi-million euro grant to collaborate widely on ensuring access to materials and equipment necessary for construction and maintenance of decarbonised buildings.
