The Chief Executive of a US green building company believes Ireland's ability to embrace prefabrication has helped in the State's bid to reduce its carbon footprint and produce green buildings.

According to an article prefabrication accounts for more than 30% of Ireland’s new builds while off site construction has lent a helping hand to raising energy-efficiency standards in the State.

Off-site construction and manufacturing is the way forward in producing green buildings, says the Chief Executive of an award winning green building company.

Gerry McCaughey, CEO of Infineco, said prefabrication creates higher-quality structures that reduce the amount of carbon produced annually during the operation of traditional onsite-built homes.

According to his article - How Europeans Build Greener Homes with Offsite Construction and Manufacturing- reduction in carbon emissions can be as much as 40% to 60% when houses are built off site.

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Today prefabrication accounts for more than 30% of the new homes built in the U.K. and Ireland and nearly 70% of new homes in Scotland.

Mr McCaughey said that Europe embraced the era of prefabrication long ago.

He said:"When the initial 15 EU members entered into the legally-binding international agreement, which committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions throughout the continent by 8% of 1990 levels by the year 2012, each country had to develop its own roadmap for reaching their individual target – or run the risk of being named, fined and shamed for failure."

The Irish government was forecasting that the number of houses built annually would increase from 22,000 to 90,000 during the next 10 to 15 years.

They knew unless plans to address residential energy efficiency that the increase in housing units would seriously undermine efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

According to Mr McGaughey the use of prefabrication helped Ireland raise energy-efficiency standards by 40% in 2008, which was followed by an additional increase of 20% in 2010.

Ireland then also began requiring that every new home must provide 15% of its energy use by onsite renewable means.

Mr McGaughey said: "For many EU countries, the planning process for reducing carbon quickly turned to how to build more sustainable and energy-efficient residential structures, as in the mid-1990s homes accounted for approximately 25 % of annual carbon dioxide emissions."

(LB)