CTC Commences new Resource Efficiency Research Project


Clean Technology Centre, at CIT, has commenced a new research project entitled: Resource Efficiency in Priority Irish Business Sectors.

On average in Europe, manufacturing firms spend about 40% of their costs on raw materials, or 50% including energy and water. This compares to only 20% on labour but savings often only focus on staff reductions. A recent research study by Clean Technology Centre for the EPA estimated that Ireland spends about €46 billion on raw materials per annum. A 2% annual target of reduced material consumption could lead to annual savings of about €928 million in the first year and could yield total savings of approximately €7 billion by 2020.

The aim of this new study is to assist Ireland in identifying mechanisms for making such improvements. This project will identify the most important economic sectors in Ireland (in terms of size, value, employment, and particularly resource use), and to provide outline resource efficiency (RE) metrics and benchmarks for these sectors, using international and published data, as well as actual Irish industrial data. This, in turn will lead to identification of improvement options, potential best practices and preferred technologies, opportunities for resource use reduction (resource efficiency), and pointers for new markets and technologies, as well as policies and strategies to promote the RE measures identified.

This research is funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, under the 2014 EPA Research Call.

We are very keen to receive information and feedback for this research from relevant stakeholders, especially from different businesses and sectors. If you would like to discuss the project with us or for further information, contact Tadhg Coakley.

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