Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 15 May 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Energy Efficient Housing: Discussion

Mr. Pat Barry:

I will start with the last thing first. On the building materials, under the nearly zero energy building, NZEB, standard, the actual construction products that go into buildings will account for more carbon in the year of construction than the entire operation of the building over 60 years, and that is in the year we build them. Globally, the embodied carbon of construction building now accounts for 11% of the total carbon globally, and concrete alone is 8%. We now have to start regulating and we need to start moving towards regulation of embodied carbon because it is so significant now at the level of efficiency we are at.