Ireland supports ‘whole life carbon’ initiative

Ireland, Czechia and Spain will be the first countries to participate in a new initiative which aims to boost the availability of quality building climate data. This is a critical step towards decarbonising the heavily-emitting sector, which is responsible for almost 40% of global emissions.

According to a recent press release from the World Green Building Council, the INDICATE initiative will bring together governments, industry and academia to tackle one of the most common barriers to enacting policies which will ensure climate neutral construction.

INDICATE seeks to accelerate policy development across Europe by generating critical baseline data for buildings to help guide policymakers in setting carbon limits that cover the full lifecycle impact of buildings, from manufacture and construction, through to deconstruction and waste processing – the so-called “whole life carbon limits”.

Currently, almost all building regulations in Europe only address carbon emissions from the building operation, ignoring the emissions that are generated before a building comes into use and at the end of its life1. These embodied carbon emissions – which together with operational CO2 are known as whole life carbon – can be more than half of a new building’s total carbon footprint and threaten to consume national construction carbon budgets well ahead of 2050 net zero goals.

Certain leading markets like Denmark, Finland, France and the Netherlands have already enacted whole life carbon policies. The first crucial step in setting these was to establish baselines. Other European countries are held back from following this example due to a lack of necessary data2

The coalition behind INDICATE is tackling this data gap. The public-private approach of the project aims to secure broad support and investment for the results from industry and policymakers alike, helping to ensure the resulting data can be quickly put to use. This is just the beginning of what the coalition hopes will be a European-wide programme to finally quantify and drive a quick reduction in unregulated carbon emissions.

The EU recently took its own first steps towards whole-life carbon regulation with proposals to introduce mandatory reporting in the revision of a key piece, the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD). By strengthening political support and industry capability among more countries, INDICATE will help to overcome opposition seen from some member states to the ambitious proposals EU lawmakers have put forward for the EPBD revision.

The Irish partners in the three newlylaunched national pilots are the Irish Green Building Council and University of Galway. INDICATE is being carried out through Construct Innovate, Ireland’s national research centre for construction technology and innovation. The lead partners already mentioned are being supported by the SEAI, University College Dublin and associate members of Construct Innovate.

Joe Durkan, Head of Technical – National Retrofit, SEAI (pictured) said: “High quality data on whole life carbon emissions associated with our built environment is critical to support policymaking and decarbonisation of our building stock. SEAI recognises the importance of collecting standardised data through the development of a national methodology to assess these emissions and is pleased to support the INDICATE project.”