LENNY ANTONELLI, Membership Engagement Officer, Irish Green Building Council, highlights key IGBC programmes for 2025 and outlines how contractors can measure and reduce the whole life carbon of their construction projects.
Here in Ireland, we’ve made good progress in cutting the operational carbon of heating, cooling and lighting new buildings, which is responsible for 23% of our greenhouse gas emissions.
Now, embodied carbon – the carbon associated with the construction, maintenance, and demolition of buildings, which causes 14% of our emissions – will be the next big challenge.
WHOLE LIFE CARBON MEASUREMENT
At the Irish Green Building Council (IGBC) l, taking a ‘whole life’ view of carbon and cutting both operational and embodied emissions will be our key focus in 2025. We have a suite of resources, tools and projects to help you achieve this.
From 2028, the new Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) will make the measurement of ‘whole life carbon’ (embodied plus operational carbon) mandatory for large buildings. And all buildings will have to measure and limit embodied carbon from 2030. But, given the scale of new construction envisioned in Ireland between now and 2030, it’s critical we start much sooner.
We are focusing on transport emissions, too. The EPA’s latest State of the Environment report says that integration of land use planning and transport planning is critical to delivering compact development and reducing car dependency.
IGBC PROGAMME PLANS FOR 2025
Next year, we’ll be ramping up our work to support the building industry to reduce embodied, operational and transport emissions through a series of exciting initiatives. These include:
– Tackling barriers to the renovation of vacant ‘above the shop’ dwellings in our towns and cities through our newly launched Vacant to Vibrant Alliance
– A new circularity roadmap for the Irish building industry to reduce embodied carbon by driving the recovery and reuse of building materials
– Measuring and cutting carbon emitted during construction from transport and site processes (In Norway, the city of Oslo has committed to making all construction sites in the region zero emissions by 2030)
– Developing a pilot ‘regulatory sandbox’, a safe space for low carbon building systems innovators and policymakers to collaborate
– A new tool to evaluate development sites for their liveability and potential carbon footprint, including transport emissions
– Tackling barriers to the retrofit of commercial buildings
– Publishing a catalogue of practical biodiversity case studies for the built environment
– Piloting the CO2 Performance Ladder, a tool that enables procurers to reduce the carbon footprint of construction
– Growing the Home Performance Index, our holistic sustainability standard, which currently has over 27,500 homes registered
THREE WAYS TO MEASURE AND REDUCE THE WHOLE LIFE CARBON OF YOUR CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS
Are you keen to learn more about how to measure and reduce the whole life carbon of your construction projects? The IGBC supports the industry to reduce operational and embodied emissions. How can you do this?
- Take our short Embodied Carbon 101 course, which we are making available free of charge to Irish Construction News readers
- Read our Viable Homes guidance to learn about what types of housing development have the lowest carbon footprint
- Start measuring whole life carbon and setting targets, such as those set by the RIAI Climate Challenge
To learn more about the steps mentioned above or about IGBC membership, visit www.igbc.ie or email memberservices@igbc.ie
To take the IGBC’s Embodied Carbon 101 course free of charge, visit https://learn.igbc.ie/course/embodied-carbon-101 and use the promo code ICN25 by the end of January.