LENNY ANTONELLI, #BuildingLife Project Manager, Irish Green Building Council, writes about a major new IGBC report which finds that while the construction sector is eager to tackle its significant role in reducing Ireland’s carbon emissions, it is being held back by a lack of clear guidance, regulatory challenges and resources—especially for SMEs.
The building industry wants to act on the climate crisis but needs support, clear guidance and practical regulations. This is the message of a major new report, ‘Building A Zero Carbon Ireland: Industry Insights & Actions’, that the Irish Green Building Council (IGBC) launched as part of its World Green Building Week programme in September.
You can read the report at www.buildingazerocarbonireland.ie, where you will also find practical case studies and simple, ‘first step’ actions that anyone in the industry can take.
Ireland’s carbon emissions
Construction and the built environment are responsible for 37% of Ireland’s carbon emissions, the highest-emitting sector, alongside agriculture. Two-thirds of these are operational emissions from heating, lighting, cooling and powering our buildings. One third are embodied emissions associated with construction, maintenance, and demolition, including the extraction, processing, and transportation of building materials.
Building A Zero Carbon Ireland
In 2022, the Irish Green Building Council published ‘Building A Zero Carbon Ireland’, our roadmap to decarbonise Ireland’s built environment across its whole life cycle – both operational and embodied emissions. While operational emissions are on a downward trend, we risk blowing our climate targets if business-as-usual continues, due to the projected increase in embodied emissions up to 2030, as the volume of construction grows and these emissions remain unregulated.
The roadmap contains recommended actions and timelines for the government, local authorities and 11 different sectors of the building industry.
Last year, IGBC published our first-ever policy scorecard to report on how the government and local authorities are progressing against the roadmap. This year, we wanted to ask how the industry is faring. But we also wanted to learn about the challenges the industry is facing, and what support it needs.
Over the past year, IGBC has had one-to-one conversations with 96 different organisations working in the industry and held eight focus groups to gain a better insight into where the industry stands. We’ve summarised our findings at www. buildingazerocarbonireland.ie.
The industry is willing to act
The key takeaway from the report is that the industry wants to act – most organisations we spoke to want to do more to reduce their carbon emissions. Some have ambitious action plans and are already taking big steps, while others are just getting started.
But critical barriers remain. Many cited regulations that restrict the use of timber in taller buildings (eg, TGD B) as a key barrier in reducing the carbon footprint of their projects. Others said that the cost of decarbonisation – both in terms of staff resources and training, as well as the price of lower-carbon materials – is a challenge.
During these conversations, it became clear that SMEs are struggling most with decarbonisation – they are more likely to lack the resources needed to understand policy and regulation, to evaluate their own carbon footprints, and to invest in taking action. More than anyone, SMEs need guidance and support.
Time to regulate life cycle carbon
During these conversations, other interesting themes emerged. Perhaps the most encouraging is that many organisations want a clear, ambitious timetable for the regulation of embodied carbon. Under the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), the life cycle global warming potential (ie, whole-life carbon) of all buildings must be measured from 2030, when the first limits will also be introduced. But many of those we spoke to want a more ambitious timetable, and large developers are already measuring and limiting life cycle carbon. There is no reason for the government not to be more ambitious than the EPBD timetable.
Another key theme was that collaboration on carbon reduction isn’t happening effectively on projects. Because carbon often isn’t discussed from the earliest stages of a build, opportunities for carbon reduction are missed. As an industry, we need to develop tools and processes to facilitate earlier and better collaboration around carbon emissions.
One way we could reduce the carbon footprint of the built environment is by reusing or repurposing buildings and materials – but we found that the link between circularity and life cycle carbon emissions is not widely appreciated. Circularity is seen as being about waste, rather than an opportunity to reduce emissions.
Take action now
As well as the industry-wide findings above, the report contains specific findings, recommended actions and practical case studies for six specific sectors – developers, building owners, architects, contractors, product manufacturers and suppliers, and social housing providers.
We are still engaging with five further sectors – engineers, planners, facility managers, valuers and surveyors. If you work in one of these areas and want to help our research, please contact lenny@igbc.ie
The challenge of tackling the climate crisis can feel overwhelming, as can the volume of regulation, policy and guidance that we have to grapple with (in fact, one of the most common requests we heard during our conversations was for simple, short, clear guidance on key sustainability and regulatory topics), but you don’t have to do it alone.
Building A Zero Carbon Ireland: Industry Insights & Actions contains simple, clear, ‘first step’ actions that anyone in the industry can take right now – just go to www.buildingazerocarbonireland. ie and find the page for your sector. When it comes to carbon emissions, it’s impossible to do everything at once, but we can all start with a single, small step.
KEY RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE IGBC’S ‘BUILDING A ZERO CARBON IRELAND: INDUSTRY INSIGHTS & ACTIONS’ REPORT
Recommendations for policymakers regulation
– Introduce a clear and ambitious timetable for regulating life cycle carbon emissions.
– Update key regulations (eg, TGDs B & D) to facilitate rapid uptake of low carbon materials. Policy
– Put sustainability at the heart of public procurement and thoroughly implement existing green public procurement policies.
– Support the industry to embrace circularity, for example, through physical and digital infrastructure (eg, digital product passports and material exchange platforms).
– Strengthen the electricity grid to enable lower-carbon manufacturing of construction products and decarbonised building sites. Prioritise electricity uses that support decarbonisation.
Recommendations for industry bodies research and education
– Produce short, simple, targeted guidance on critical pieces of regulation, key sustainability concepts and examples of good practice.
– Disseminate the concept of life cycle costing and its relationship to low-carbon construction more widely.
– Research the carbon performance of different forms of Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) and disseminate the results to industry.
– Develop a clear, agreed definition of net zero carbon for the industry to work towards.
– Develop guidance and tools to make Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) the norm on projects.
Tools & processes
– Scale a collaborative, design for performance approach to sustainability into all construction projects, building upon the work completed as part of projects such as Design for Performance (RIAI & IGBC).
– Prioritise education around Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) to help the industry understand these documents and how to utilise them in specification.