How are Ireland’s carbon emissions assessed?
Carbon emissions or ‘green house gases’ are the main metric used to assess climate change and they can be determined by various approaches, which can alter the perceived degree of severity of global warming. The two principal approaches that are used to assess carbon emissions in Ireland are the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) method and the LCA (Life-cycle assessment) method. The LCA method takes a more holistic measure of emissions and gives Ireland a lower carbon footprint but it is the IPCC method that is used by the International Panel on Climate Change and therefore this approach forms the official figures at EU level.
The Environmental Protection Agency are the independent public body that are responsible for the compilation of annual carbon emission figures in Ireland. Ireland is the first country in the world to embark on a programme of measuring the carbon footprint of all national dairy farms. Through the Sustainable Dairy Assurance Standard (SDAS) auditing framework, auditors gather information that is compiled with other information from central databases in DAFM, ICBF and the milk purchasers to calculate a carbon footprint individual to each farm. The carbon footprinting model used by Bord Bia is accredited by the Carbon Trust to PAS 50. Every farmer participating in the SDAS receives feedback informing them of what their carbon footprint is and highlighting how it can be reduced.
Extra Information:
The term ‘carbon emissions’ generally refers to the ‘carbon footprint’ or carbon equivalence of the collection of green house gases. Therefore carbon emissions are synonymous with total green house gas emissions as they refer to the collection of greenhouse gases: Carbon Dioxide (CO 2 ), Methane (CH 4 ), Nitrous Oxide (N 2 O), Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), Perfluorocarbons (PFCs), Sulphur Hexafluoride (SF 6 ), and Nitrogen Trifluoride (NF 3 ).
Carbon dioxide equivalency is a quantity that describes, for a given mixture and amount of greenhouse gas, the amount of CO 2 that would have the same global warming potential, when measured over a specified timescale (generally 100 years). Carbon emissions are classified into six categories; Energy, Residential, Industry & Commercial, Agriculture, Transport and Waste.