Carbon Neutral Concrete launched to fight Climate Change

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CarbonAided & Ecocem

Through the supply and sale of carbon offsets, CarbonAided will support a range of projects including a biogas scheme in Sri Lanka, micro-hydro and alternative energy projects in Peru, and a cooking stove scheme for communities in Bangladesh. For details see the sustainability projects section.

For example, the Bangladeshi project installs safe and energy efficient domestic cooking stoves in houses within third world communities. According to the World Health Organisation, the indoor air pollution caused by cooking results in an estimated 1.6 million premature deaths in the developing world due to health impacts each year, largely among women and children. This is a death toll greater than that caused by Malaria. It also causes acute respiratory infections, ear and eye problems, breathlessness, chest pains, headaches and giddiness. Providing communities with clean and energy efficient stoves is a key way in which this enormous global problem can be addressed.

CarbonAided's project partner in Bangladesh, Practical Action, is running training courses to show people how to build improved energy efficient stoves using local materials. The stoves consume less than half the fuel compared to a traditional open fire and have chimneys to remove the smoke. A key element of the programme is to show people how to set up a micro enterprise to make stoves for others in the community, and thus ensure that more stoves are built after the training courses have finished.

Carbon Aided projects are certified by UN accredited SGS - the world's leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company.
Carbon Aided also contributes up to 15% of its revenues to third world projects aimed at alleviating hardship and promoting environmental sustainability.

Ecocem

Since it opened a €10 million low carbon cement manufacturing facility in Dublin in 2004, Ecocem has avoided the dumping of over 700,000 tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere by supplying the Irish Construction Industry with Green Cement.

Since the production of Ecocem green cement also requires much less energy than ordinary cement, massive energy savings have also been made, enough to meet all the electricity needs of all Irish homes for a month.

Ecocem's environmentally friendly cement is manufactured from a recycled product, blastfurnace slag, a by-product of steel-making. Its manufacture saves energy, CO₂ and other emissions when compared to the manufacture of ordinary cement. It is now widely used as an environmentally friendly cost-neutral alternative to ordinary cement on many major construction projects throughout Ireland.

Through its manufacturing operations, Ecocem currently saves the emission of 300,000 tonnes of CO₂ in Ireland every year. The benefits of Ecocem green cement are not just confined to the environment. This is the highest quality cement available in Ireland today: its use provides stronger, longer-lasting and better looking concrete. For details see: www.ecocem.ie

KYOTO

Latest figures from the European Environment Agency (EEA) have shown that EU emissions decreased slightly in 2005 relative to the previous year, by 0.8% - the first decrease since 2001. But in 2005, the combined EU-15 emissions were still only 1.5 percent below 1990 levels, compared to the requirement to cut greenhouse gas pollution by 8 per cent by 2012.

Ireland remains one of the worst performers in the EU, reporting a 1.87 per cent increase in greenhouse gas emissions between 2004 and 2005. Figures showed that the Republic pumped out close to 70 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent in 2005, an increase of 1.2 million tonnes on the previous year.

The programme for Government 2007 sets out an objective for the reductions of CO₂ emissions in Ireland by 3% per annum. Against the background of Ireland's current performance this represents an extremely ambitious target.

Press Information:

Tim Kinsella
t: (01) 703 8607 / 086 813 7512