Supporting Transport Infrastructure Ireland’s sustainability journey

A bespoke carbon assessment tool aligned with PAS 2080

As climate change drives tighter EU regulations, infrastructure developers are facing new requirements for assessing environmental impacts.

The revised Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Directive (2014/52/EU), which came into effect in 2017, introduced a requirement to evaluate a project’s impact on the climate due to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as well as to assess how future climate change could affect the project.

To help TII align with the Directive requirements, we developed a custom carbon emissions assessment tool for road, light rail and active travel (Greenway) projects.

Designed to assess emissions throughout the entire project lifecycle—from design to construction, operation, and end of life—the tool identifies carbon hotspots and opportunities for reduction.

It is also aligned with PAS 2080, a global standard for managing carbon in infrastructure, and was rigorously tested to ensure it delivers robust outputs while being user-friendly.

To allow the tool to meet TII's needs and consider the specific Irish context, we conducted a workshop with TII staff and suppliers (the end users), enabling us to better understand their challenges. Following the development of the tool, we provided comprehensive training, including a webinar and guidance, to help TII teams and external users to use the tool to maximum effect.

Since its roll out, the tool has facilitated consistent carbon reporting for both major developments and minor upgrades – and is playing a vital role in cutting emissions across TII’s transport projects.

Our team continues to refine and expand the tool’s capabilities, adding features such as greenway assessments and broadening the emissions factor library. This is ensuring it remains a vital asset in TII’s sustainability strategy.

Creating carbon benchmarks

Working closely with TII and the N22 Baile Bhuirne to Macroom bypass project team, we used the carbon tool to begin the development of a series of carbon benchmarks for road projects.

This exercise focused on quantifying construction emissions from various road structures and the carriageway by leveraging as-built data from the N22 project.

The resulting benchmarks will facilitate TII to inform and manage their contribution to sectoral carbon budgets more effectively and provide early carbon estimates during the design phase of projects. This will allow TII to identify carbon hotspots and target areas with the most potential for emissions reduction at the early stage of a scheme.

Crucially, these benchmarks serve as an internal reference for TII – enabling project comparisons and the validation of the carbon performance of future road projects.

Comprehensive climate guidance and action training

In addition to the carbon tool and benchmarking analysis, we helped TII develop its overarching climate assessment guidelines.

These guidelines provide a comprehensive framework for conducting GHG Assessments, Climate Change Risk Assessments (CCRA), and In-Combination Climate Impact (ICCI) Assessments for national road, light rail and greenway projects.

Alongside this, we delivered a tailored Climate Action Leadership Training programme for over 40 of TII’s senior management staff.

The training – designed to meet Ireland’s Climate Action Plan 2023 requirements – included two core modules with a strong focus on using the TII carbon tool and applying the climate guidelines.

To broaden engagement, we created two public training videos that provide a practical overview of how to use the carbon assessment tool effectively.