Mr. Seán Armstrong:

The Deputy is correct. Embodied carbon is approximately 10% of emissions internationally. When I referred to our sectoral challenges, I was talking about what is assigned under Climate Action Plan 2021. Embodied carbon is also committed to in that plan. Research work is being done by SEAI and pilot projects are committed to by the OPW but there is a substantive area of development in the plan

The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment is committed to lead a task force to reduce the embodied energy in construction materials. There is a work programme set out in the 2021 climate action plan. It focuses on standards, construction products regulation and establishing frameworks to measure embodied carbon in buildings. A critical path item with regard to the implementation of measuring embodied carbon in buildings is the review of the construction products regulation because that will set the standard for measuring the environmental performance of construction products. To measure the volume of embodied carbon in a building, we need to know what the embodied carbon of each construction product that has gone into that building is and to know the embodied carbon, we need a certificate. The rules for calculating that carbon will be defined by the construction products regulation. A draft regulation was published for review recently. There is a horizontal working group looking to define-----