10 December 2025

D/RES Properties’ creche and community buildings in Wicklow’s Newtownmountkennedy are practically complete, becoming Ireland’s first privately developed public building to achieve Net Zero Carbon.

This landmark 600sqm creche and 400sqm community centre is setting a powerful blueprint for decarbonising the built environment. Demonstrating that schemes can be delivered with the goal of whole-life carbon accountability, the project has become a new benchmark and aims to inspire Ireland to reduce carbon emissions across the development sector.

The product of a collaboration between the IGBC, Construct Innovate, and the University of Galway, D/RES’ adopted the RIAI 2020 Climate Challenge target of 450kgCO2E/sqm for residential embodied carbon as a baseline, and harnessed a ‘timber first’ policy, selecting only PEFC-certified renewable timber materials.

 

Utilising Mass Engineered Timber (MET) pushes the boundaries of embodied carbon reduction in public building typologies. MET incorporates Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) panels for floors and walls, supported by Glued Laminated (Glulam) Timber columns and beams. This offers structural integrity providing high strength-to-weight ratios and environmental benefits due to sustainably sourced timber’s inherent carbon sequestration properties.

The University of Galway carried out a full lifecycle carbon assessment across 80 product-specific Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) using the IGBC Carbon Designer Tool. The findings showed a dramatic improvement when selecting these materials, seeing the crèche’s embodied carbon fall from 535 kgCO2E/sqm to 259 kgCO2E/sqm, whilst the community centre dropped from 701 kgCO2E/sqm to 319 kgCO2E/sqm once sequestered carbon was factored in. These reductions clearly demonstrate the climate impact of replacing carbon-intensive materials with Mass Engineered Timber (MET).

D/RES also carried out an assessment of the 14,900 trees and whips planted within the linear park adjacent to the development. Utilising the Teagasc Forest Carbon Tool, their analysis indicates that approximately 1,350 of these trees would be sufficient to offset the residual global warming potential emissions not captured within the operational and embodied carbon calculations for the crèche and community centre, reinforcing the project’s commitment to achieving true Net Zero status.

With carbon reduction at the forefront of the project’s goals, our specialists provided M&E Services for the base build at D/RES and are now working on the tenant fit out. Our MEP experts assessed operational carbon using the Simplified Building Energy Model for Ireland (SBEMie), and more comprehensive CIBSE TM54 design for performance method, ensuring the realistic prediction of both regulated and unregulated usage. To maximise efficiency within the build, we implemented efficient heating and cooling systems, natural ventilation and renewable energy utilising solar PV systems, integrated to supply 20% of the operational energy needs of each building.

Our team is now bringing the knowledge accumulated during the base build design phase through to the fit-out stage, playing our part in delivering the scheme in line D/RES’ exceptional energy and carbon performance goals and standards.