First Published in Passive House Plus.
In this new #BuildingLife Ambassador Spotlight Series, Passive House Plus is profiling leaders who have endorsed the Irish Green Building Council’s call to address the environmental impacts of buildings across their lifecycle.
In this fifth interview of the series, Susan McGarry, Managing Director at Ecocem Ireland, tell us more about the campaign and why she is supporting it.
Why did you choose to become a #BuildingLife ambassador?
SMcG: Ecocem is a founding member of the IGBC and has been highly involved with the organisation for all its existence. Ten years ago, it was a real struggle to talk about the importance of low carbon building materials. The IGBC was one of the first organisations to highlight that this issue needed to be addressed. You cannot act on something that has never been measured so I was excited to read the initial assessment of the carbon emissions associated with the construction and operation of the Irish built environment, produced by UCD’s Building in a Climate Emergency Research Group for the IGBC. The document provides baseline data on embodied carbon which had never been collected before. It highlights that cement is a big part of Ireland’s national greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 4% of our emissions.
At a personal level, I have always been highly interested in sustainably. Prior to becoming Managing Director of Ecocem Ireland in 2021, I worked as Ecocem’s European Sustainability Manager for four years. Most of my career has been in sustainable building materials. When I was asked to become a #BuildingLife ambassador, I immediately accepted as the campaign is fully aligned with both Ecocem’s business focus and my values.
What are you hoping to achieve with the #BuildingLife campaign?
SMcG: Progress has been made over the last few years. For instance, the Climate Action Plan (2021) includes for the first time actions to address whole life carbon. It also highlights the need to reduce the CO₂ emissions associated with the cement production process, not only by facilitating the use of alternative fuels but also by maximising clinker replacement.
It’s a first step but we need to be more ambitious. The UCD’s report shows that embodied carbon accounts for 11% of Ireland’s emissions. I strongly believe, we have the technology and the capability to target these emissions, but this requires a shift in the entire landscape. We need a clear action plan and this must evolve gradually to incorporate stronger language. A simple step could be to introduce Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for all projects as part of the planning process, or at the very least, for publicly funded projects.
The #BuildingLife campaign provides a great opportunity to work with very knowledgeable people to decarbonise our built environment, and to engage with everyone in the industry, to raise awareness about what is possible and what needs to be done.
Can you explain a few ways in which Ecocem is working towards a sustainable built environment?
SMcG: At Ecocem, we believe that immediate action is needed to decarbonise the cement industry. We don’t have time to wait for green hydrogen, carbon storage technologies or other long term solutions. That’s why we invest 2% of our annual turnover in innovation and disruptive technologies. Fourteen per cent of our staff work in RDD and we recently opened an innovation centre in Paris to accelerate the development of new technology and products that will help our industry decarbonise more quickly. The centre enables our innovation team to focus on testing, evaluating, and improving our low carbon solutions. It also allows them to run industrial-sized trials in collaboration with trusted industry partners and universities. The alternatives exist but we are now working on scaling them up.
#BuildingLife is a project led in Ireland by the Irish Green Building Council. The initiative aims to achieve the mix of privasector action and public policy necessary to tackle the whole-life impact of buildings. Learn more here.
