The Irish Green Building Council (IGBC) provides leadership for a sustainable built environment. IGBC is a registered charity with over 220+ corporate members drawn from all parts of the value chain, from occupiers, design professionals, contractors, suppliers, academics and public authorities and affiliated with a global network of 70 national councils within the World Green Building Council. This allows us to create workable solutions and tools to deliver transformative change towards a sustainable built environment.

The Irish Green Building Council (IGBC) welcome the opportunity to make a submission on Cork City Council’s Draft Development Plan. Planning plays a crucial role in national climate policy both in terms of policy for Adaptation, to protect against future climatic impacts on built environment, and creating the correct policy signals for Mitigation, to limit, as far as possible, carbon emissions associated with spatial development. As buildings account for 39% of global carbon emissions, IGBC is also advocating for a Whole Life Carbon (WLC) approach to development so that policies are designed to target both operational (energy-in-use) and embodied carbon (carbon intensity) of buildings. This submission presents the general principles that the IGBC believe should underpin all Development Plans in order to ensure that they are fully aligned with the government policy objective to reduce carbon emissions by 50% by 2030. It presents a range of suggested actions and supporting tools that the Council should consider in order to incorporate a WLC approach and to consider carbon as a key performance metric for plans.