National Carbon Data For Common Construction Materials In Ireland

The aim of this public consultation process is to gather stakeholder feedback on the research that has been carried out up until this point for this issue and its reporting. This article will talk about the many questions that are used to gather feedback and any other important information about this issue.

This virtual public consultation will address the absence of a national database for Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) data on common construction materials. LCA data can be used as the starting point for a new national database of common construction materials for Ireland.

The virtual public consultation also aims to ensure the comparability of LCAs, so in the absence of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), standard default figures are used for common construction materials. It is also intended to stimulate the market so more accurate figures can be provided through verified EPD whether it be for specific products or sectoral EPDs.

The Irish Green Building Council along with other Green Building Councils across the whole of Europe, have ordered research to be done about the carbon impacts under the LifeLevel(s) Project. The main goal of the LifeLevel(s) Project is to mainstream sustainable buildings in Europe through the greater awareness and use of indicators within the Level(s) framework. Previous attempts to do this have proved difficult and challenging due to a lack of data and a lack of expertise in the industry.

The LifeLevel(s) project works with stakeholders from the public, private, and certification schemes to explore how the mentioned key Level(s) indicators can be implemented on a pan-European scale. This project also wants to get a greater sense among the main actors in the industry and government on the necessity of Level(s) and a lifecycle approach framework in addressing climate environmental risk.

This project is significant as it wants to bring together hundreds of collaborators from different sectors such as government, industry, public sector, and more with the aim to create a foundation for the development of future European and national sustainable development policies, to improve the environmental and climate performance, and to create positive shifts.

What is meant by Level(s)?

Level(s) is a voluntary reporting framework that is used to improve the sustainability of buildings. It uses existing standards and provides a common EU approach to the assessment of environmental performance in the built environment.

The Level(s) framework aims to unite the whole sector value chain around a common EU language so build performance can be greater and more sustainable than it is right now. This framework looks at the full lifecycle of buildings and then addresses their potential emissions reductions, efficient and circular resource flows, and wants to support the health and wellbeing of everyone the buildings are built to serve. This framework will be used as the force that will cause actors across Europe’s building sector to understand how they can start collaborating with each other to create a sustainable built environment for all Europeans and not just select countries.

This public consultation aims to make this easier. The Cambridge Architectural Research (CAR) UK was commissioned to research the carbon impact of the following common construction materials, cement, aluminium, steel, aggregates, glass, timber, and brick.

Stakeholder Feedback

Stakeholder feedback is going to be gathered on the research carried out based on these questions:

• Do you see the importance and necessity of a national database?

• Are there any other common construction materials for which Irish specific generic datasets would provide more representative data?

• Do you agree with the method used to create the dataset? Do you have any concerns with the dataset? If you do have concerns, what are they?

• Are you in agreement with the approach to the use of safety margins for use in generic data? Should these approaches be different for use in procurement versus for calculation of building level LCA as suggested?

• Do you think there should be additional datasets included in the future? If you think there should be, what should they be?

• What do you think the Irish Green Building Council (IGBC) should do next with the recommendations that they are given?

• Is there anything else that you would like to add and bring up about this issue?

What You Need To Know About This Research And Report

The research will be similar to a study that was carried out by Ecometro for Spain. It covered many different areas that are important in the development of quality data that can be used to make a change in a faster and easier way.

The research wanted to recognise the datasets for the commonly encountered high carbon impact common construction materials such as cement, aluminium, steel, aggregates, glass, timber, and brick. Another thing that it wanted to recognise were key factors that vary the impact categories for each construction material so a calculation tool can be created for each material which would help to provide a roadmap for fitting generic data more closely to national data.

The methods used to develop the data for this report include qualitative interviews with key stakeholders to identify specific features of the regulatory environment and of the construction material markets. The qualitative data is analysed to identify existing generic and product specific materials data.

The qualitative data includes ongoing discussions with the Green Building Council representatives and formal interviews with many stakeholders in the industry. This was done to find out the national rules and regulations, what the significant construction product markets are in the country, what common construction materials are produced locally, and which ones are imported for somewhere else, and to find out any additional sources of data and local factors that could be useful.

Public comment and feedback is invited before the Wednesday 14th of July, 2021. Download the submission form here.

The Public Consultation Institute of Ireland (PCII) is committed to engaging citizens and empowering communities through the use of emerging technologies, which are transforming how the Government and citizens communicate and interact. PCII’s mission is to bring more people into the public participatory process. Not only will this expand informed public engagement, early studies suggest that it is likely to enhance the diversity and quality of partipartipation. View a list of public consultations currently open at www.publicconsultation.ie