Margareta Pagano

Market-leading eco-warriors

Margareta Pagano visits Kingspan, a family-run firm at the forefront of zero-carbon building technology

issue 07 April 2007

It’s bleak, cold and nearly dusk at Kingspan’s industrial estate at Holywell in north Wales. Gene Murtagh runs up a ladder to show off a roof garden made with Kingspan’s insulated panels, which are being tested to see how much soil they can take. Roof gardens are a must-have for all self-respecting eco-warriors — like bobble hats. ‘Buildings are like your body — 70 per cent of heat is lost from the roof,’ explains the young Irish entrepreneur. He runs off again, across to the 20-kilowatt turbine to check the wind strength: lousy today, because of the cold.

But the turbine, together with the solar panels on the roof of Kingspan’s visitors’ centre, is generating enough electricity to run the offices. Inside, Murtagh can check the efficiency of his self-sufficiency: a screen monitor measures the building’s energy consumption, and theoretical energy savings, in real time. Today it shows 1.7 tonnes of CO2 generation have been averted over the last few months, while 71,000 litres of rain water have been collected to flush the toilets.

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