READ THE FINAL VERSION OF THE ROADMAP HERE
On the 6th of May the Irish Green Building Council (IGBC) launched a draft roadmap to decarbonise Ireland’s built environment across its whole life cycle. The draft roadmap shows that construction and the built environment are directly responsible for 37% of Ireland’s emissions, the same as agriculture. This is made up of about 23% operational emissions associated with the energy we use to heat, cool, and light our buildings. A further 14% of the emissions are embodied carbon emissions from the production of construction materials, transport of materials, construction process, maintenance, repair and disposal of buildings and infrastructure.
With 400,000 new homes to be built by 2030, there is a real risk that we will exceed the construction and built environment carbon budget if embodied carbon emissions are not rapidly addressed.
The draft roadmap lays out the necessary steps for the industry and government to halve the built environment emissions by 2030. Key recommendations include:
- Publishing a clear timeline on the introduction of regulations on embodied carbon to provide certainty to the industry.
- Prioritising reuse of existing buildings and bringing as much vacant property as possible back into use in our villages, towns, and cities to avoid throwing away the embodied carbon and valuable resources within them.
- Increasing support for energy renovation, including phased renovation, and improving quality assurance.
- For new build, encouraging better design to support repair, adaptability, and reuse.
- Encouraging the use of low impact construction materials, such as reused and recycled products, and biobased construction materials.
The draft roadmap was developed by the Irish Green Building Council in close cooperation with industry and key stakeholders as part of the #BuildingLife Campaign. The draft roadmap and the carbon modelling documents are available here.
The IGBC would like to hear your feedback on this document and the proposed recommendations. The public consultation period for submitting your feedback is open for two months from the 7th of May until the 7th July 2022.
Please complete this form or complete this word document and return it to [email protected] before the 7th of July 2022. After this date, we will analyse the results of the public consultation and integrate relevant feedback into the final roadmap document due for publication in September 2022.
