Every climate term you'll encounter in Irish policy, building regulations and energy debates - explained in plain English with real Irish data. Browse the full glossary below or use Ctrl+F to find a specific term.
🌿 A
- 🌿 Afforestation - Why Ireland has the second-lowest forest cover in Europe and what it takes to plant new woodland on open land.
- 🌿 Air Tightness - How a blower door test measures the draughtiness of your home and why nZEB rules now demand five times better than 2007 standards.
🌿 B
- 🌿 Baseload - The minimum electricity demand that never switches off, even at 4am in June, and why it shapes everything about how the grid is run.
- 🌿 Biogenic Methane Emissions - The methane cattle and sheep produce from digestion, why it behaves differently from fossil CO2, and what it means for Ireland's largest emitting sector.
🌿 C
- 🌿 Cap and Trade - The mechanism that puts a shrinking ceiling on pollution and lets companies trade the right to emit, from the US acid rain programme to global carbon markets.
- 🌿 Capacity Factor - Why a 3 MW wind turbine never actually produces 3 MW around the clock, and what Ireland's real-world percentages look like.
- 🌿 Carbon Budgets - Ireland's legally binding cap on total greenhouse gas emissions for each five-year period and how much of the first budget has already been spent.
- 🌿 Carbon Capture - Trapping CO2 before it reaches the atmosphere, either at the smokestack or directly from the air, and whether it can work at scale.
- 🌿 Carbon Credits - What a carbon credit actually represents, how credits are created through verified projects, and why not all credits are worth the same.
- 🌿 Carbon Farming - Paying farmers to store carbon in soil, hedgerows and restored peatland, and how the EU's new certification framework is turning this into a real income stream.
- 🌿 Carbon Footprint - The total greenhouse gas emissions caused by a person, product or organisation, measured in tonnes of CO2 equivalent.
- 🌿 Carbon Leakage - When strict climate policy in one country simply pushes dirty production to another, and how the EU's new border carbon tax aims to stop it.
- 🌿 Carbon Neutral - The difference between carbon neutral and net zero, and why the EU is about to restrict companies from using offset-based neutrality claims on products.
- 🌿 Carbon Sequestration - The biological and geological processes that lock carbon away, from photosynthesis in forests to peat accumulation in bogs.
- 🌿 Carbon Sink - Any system that absorbs more carbon than it releases, and why Ireland's sinks have flipped from an asset to a liability.
- 🌿 Carbon Trading - How carbon is bought and sold in compliance and voluntary markets, from EU allowances to project-based offset credits.
- 🌿 Circular Design - Designing buildings and products so they can be taken apart, adapted and reused instead of demolished and dumped.
- 🌿 Climate Adaptation - Adjusting infrastructure, planning and behaviour to cope with the climate change that is already locked in.
- 🌿 Climate Mitigation - Every action that reduces or prevents greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere in the first place.
- 🌿 Climate Resilience - The capacity of communities, infrastructure and ecosystems to absorb climate shocks and keep functioning.
- 🌿 COP (Climate Conference) - The annual UN summit where nearly 200 countries negotiate global climate agreements, from Kyoto to Paris to Belem.
- 🌿 Curtailment - When wind farms are told to stop generating because the grid cannot absorb all the clean power they produce.
🌿 D
- 🌿 Demand Response - Shifting when you use electricity so the grid can handle more renewables and fewer gas-fired power stations.
- 🌿 Dispatchable Generation - Power plants that can be turned on within minutes when the wind drops, and why Ireland still needs them even with record renewable capacity.
🌿 E
- 🌿 Embodied Carbon - The emissions baked into a building before anyone switches on a light, from cement production to steel manufacturing.
- 🌿 Emissions Trading System - The EU's cap-and-trade market that puts a price on carbon for power stations, heavy industry, aviation and soon buildings and transport.
- 🌿 Energy Poverty - When households cannot afford to heat their homes adequately, and why Ireland's older housing stock makes the problem worse.
- 🌿 Energy Storage - Batteries, pumped hydro and other technologies that bank surplus electricity for when the wind drops and demand peaks.
- 🌿 EU Taxonomy - The EU's classification system that defines which economic activities count as environmentally sustainable for investment purposes.
🌿 F
- 🌿 F-Gases - The synthetic gases hiding in your fridge, air conditioning and heat pump that can be thousands of times more potent than CO2.
🌿 G
- 🌿 Global Warming Potential - The multiplier that lets us compare methane, nitrous oxide and other gases to CO2 on a common scale.
- 🌿 Green Bond - Government and corporate bonds where the money raised is ring-fenced for climate and environmental projects.
- 🌿 Green Hydrogen - Hydrogen made by splitting water with renewable electricity, and whether it can decarbonise the sectors electrification cannot reach.
- 🌿 Greenhouse Gas - The gases that trap heat in the atmosphere and drive climate change, from carbon dioxide to methane to nitrous oxide.
- 🌿 Greenwashing Directive - The EU law that bans vague environmental claims and offset-based "carbon neutral" labels on products from September 2026.
🌿 I
- 🌿 IPCC - The UN body that reviews thousands of climate studies and tells the world exactly how bad things are and what can still be done.
🌿 J
- 🌿 Just Transition - Making sure workers and communities who depend on fossil fuel industries are not left behind as the economy shifts to clean energy.
🌿 L
- 🌿 Life Cycle Assessment - Measuring the total environmental impact of a product or building from raw material extraction to end-of-life disposal.
- 🌿 LULUCF - Land use, land use change and forestry - the accounting category that tracks whether Ireland's land is absorbing or releasing carbon.
🌿 M
- 🌿 Methane - The greenhouse gas that is 80 times more potent than CO2 over 20 years, and why cutting it is the fastest way to slow warming.
- 🌿 Microgeneration - Generating your own electricity at home with solar panels, small wind turbines or micro-hydro, and getting paid for what you export to the grid.
- 🌿 MtCO2eq - The unit used to measure national emissions, and how to read the numbers that appear in every Irish climate report.
🌿 N
- 🌿 Nationally Determined Contributions - The climate pledges every country submits under the Paris Agreement, and why Ireland's targets sit inside the EU's collective commitment.
- 🌿 nZEB - Nearly Zero Energy Buildings, the building standard every new Irish home has had to meet since November 2019.
🌿 P
- 🌿 Passive House - The gold standard for ultra-low energy buildings that stay warm in winter and cool in summer with almost no heating system.
- 🌿 Peatland Restoration - Rewetting Ireland's damaged bogs to stop them releasing carbon and start rebuilding one of the most effective natural carbon stores on earth.
- 🌿 Power Purchase Agreement - Long-term contracts that let businesses buy renewable electricity directly from wind and solar farms at a fixed price.
🌿 R
- 🌿 R-Value - The number that tells you how well insulation resists heat flow - the higher the R-value, the better it keeps warmth in.
- 🌿 Renewable Heat Obligation - The upcoming law that will force fossil fuel suppliers to blend renewable energy into Ireland's heating supply.
🌿 S
- 🌿 Soil Carbon - The vast store of organic carbon sitting beneath Ireland's fields and bogs, and why farming practices determine whether it stays locked away or escapes.
🌿 T
- 🌿 Thermal Bridging - The weak spots in a building's insulation where heat escapes through junctions, lintels and structural connections.
- 🌿 Thermal Envelope - The continuous insulated boundary that separates the warm inside of a building from the cold outside.
- 🌿 Tipping Point - The thresholds beyond which climate change becomes self-reinforcing and irreversible, from ice sheet collapse to Amazon dieback.
🌿 U
- 🌿 U-Value - The measure of how quickly heat passes through a wall, roof, floor or window - lower means better insulation.
📚 Related Guides
🌿 Climate Change Ireland
🌿 Carbon Tax
🌿 Biodiversity
🌿 Extreme Weather & the Economy
🌿 Net Zero
🌿 Greenwashing
🌿 Scope 1, 2 & 3 Emissions
🌿 Circular Economy
👉 All guides and calculators