Decarbonising Zones in Ireland: local government as an innovator, facilitator and place-maker

Summary

In order to give effect to its decarbonisation commitments, the Irish Government has required each local authority to designate at least one Decarbonising Zone (DZ). The DZ concept is one of Ireland’s most distinctive contributions to place-based climate governance. Introduced under the Climate Action Plan 2021, and evolving from previous place-based initiatives, and given statutory grounding by the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021, Decarbonising Zones require each of Ireland’s 31 local councils to select a defined spatial area and develop an integrated plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in that area by 51% by 2030, in line with national climate targets.

Irish councils are currently participating in a targeted analysis of DZs, which has been commissioned by ESPON, the European Observation Network for Territorial Development and Cohesion. The ESPON ITADZ targeted analysis has the potential to influence local, national and EU policies. The place-based analytical approach of this research seeks to strengthen the DZ initiative by providing evidence and recommendations to inform national government – to better understand and deliver the new policy concept of DZs. It also envisages raising the profile of DZs and assisting all stakeholders to deliver actions by identifying good practice and learning from other European countries. The research is also expected to generate learnings and signposts that may be applied in other contexts across Europe.

This resource explains what Decarbonising Zones are, how they connect to Ireland’s broader climate governance framework, and what role local authorities and other stakeholders play in designing and delivering them, supported by the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment. It refers to examples of actions that are already underway – to give a snapshot of the range of approaches being taken across the country.

Local councils play a dual role in DZ delivery: as direct actors within their own operational footprints and as facilitators and connectors of the wider local partnerships on which implementation depends. It notes that the DZ model, as set out in the statutory guidelines for the development of the Local Climate Action Plans, explicitly invites councils to take risks, experiment and demonstrate what is possible at a local scale, with the expectation that successful approaches will be replicated nationally.

This resource will be of interest to local elected members, government officials working in the area of climate and environment, climate action staff in councils, community development practitioners and anyone involved in designing or implementing place-based approaches to the green transition — in Ireland or in other jurisdictions developing comparable models.

Overview and context

Ireland has set legally binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 51% by 2030 compared to 2018 levels, and to reach a climate-neutral economy by no later than 2050. These commitments are enshrined in the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021 (the Climate Act), which also introduced a system of five-year carbon budgets and sectoral emissions ceilings – placing a legal ceiling on the emissions permitted in each sector of the Irish economy across successive budgetary periods.

This framework represents a policy response to the challenges that Ireland faces in meeting its 2030 target. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) projected in May 2025 that fully implementing the current Climate Action Plan 2024 would deliver up to a 23% reduction in emissions by 2030 – less than half the statutory target. The buildings (residential), transport and industry sectors are among those furthest from their sectoral ceilings. Local councils in Ireland have a certain level of leverage in these sectors – through planning and as enablers of economic development, as well as civic engagement, while national-level bodies also have roles and responsibilities.

Decarbonising Zones represent a deliberate national policy choice that is informed by pre-existing initiatives, including the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland’s (SEAI’s) Sustainable Energy Communities (SECs) and the Portlaoise Low-Carbon Town (see LGiU Briefing, 27 October 2025) among others. They seek to harness local government capacity and local civil society knowledge in accelerating decarbonisation, by creating and nurturing place-specific environments and processes in which integrated solutions can be designed, tested and refined before being scaled across wider areas – in Ireland, and potentially across Europe.

The Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment submitted an application to ESPON for ITADZ, working with members of the DZ Advisory Group, which it had established, and was successful. The project went out to tender in 2025 for consultants to carry out the analysis. ITADZ provides an opportunity to identify best practices and to make recommendations in respect of mainstreaming and policy development.

What is a Decarbonising Zone?

A Decarbonising Zone is a spatially defined area, selected by a local authority, in which a range of climate mitigation, circular economy, adaptation and biodiversity measures are identified and implemented to address local low-carbon energy, greenhouse gas emissions and climate needs. The zone must contribute to national climate action targets and must set out how emissions within its boundary will be reduced by at least 51% by 2030, consistent with the national climate objective.

The concept was first introduced in the Climate Action Plan 2019, which required every council to plan a Decarbonising Zone. Its status was strengthened by the Climate Act 2021 and further consolidated by the statutory Guidelines for Local Authority Climate Action Plans, published by the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications (DECC) in March 2023 (now overseen by its successor, the Department of Climate, Energy and Environment), which outlined that Decarbonising Zones must be included as a defined element of every local authority’s Climate Action Plan (LA CAP). All 31 local authorities completed their LA CAPs in early 2024.

A DZ must cover a minimum population of 5,000 people or a land area of at least 5 square kilometres. It can be urban or rural; it can be a town centre, a coastal community, an island, a suburb or an industrial estate. The defining characteristic is not its type or size but its potential: each zone should contain meaningful opportunities for climate action across multiple sectors – buildings, transport, energy, biodiversity, waste and land use – and should be capable of generating demonstrable, measurable results that can inform policy and practice elsewhere.

The government department with lead responsibility for the DZ policy is the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment (formerly DECC), which has established an inter-departmental and inter-agency Decarbonising Zone Advisory Group to provide support and guidance to local authorities at national level. Climate Action Regional Offices (CAROs) work with local authorities in delivering their DZ strategies along with wider climate action strategies. The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) – Ireland’s national sustainable energy authority – is the co-lead of the Advisory Group and plays an important supporting role, particularly in relation to energy efficiency, retrofitting programmes and Sustainable Energy Communities, which frequently operate in or alongside Decarbonising Zones.

Decarbonising Zones in Ireland

The role of local government

Councils occupy a dual position in the Decarbonising Zone model. They act both as direct deliverers of climate action within their own operational footprint and as facilitators and enablers of a wider coalition of actors whose co-operation is needed to achieve the scale of change the 51% target demands.

Within their own operations, they have direct control over a range of emissions-relevant activities: their building’s portfolio, their vehicle fleet, street lighting and other infrastructure, public realm and green space management, and procurement decisions. The DZ framework gives local authorities a defined spatial context within which to concentrate and integrate these operational improvements, rather than pursuing them piecemeal across the entire council area.

Each council has incorporated a DZ Strategy, plan or register of opportunities into its Climate Action Plan. In Balbriggan, for example, Fingal County Council identified opportunities for energy network upgrades, improved public transport and active travel infrastructure, building retrofits in the residential and commercial sectors, and biodiversity and greening projects – many of which touch on assets or services within the council’s own management. Fingal’s DZ plan also runs alongside the Our Balbriggan project, a regeneration initiative, thereby illustrating how the DZ framework can be integrated with other existing place-based investment programmes.

The ambition of a 51% emissions reduction within a DZ cannot be delivered by local government acting alone. The majority of emissions in any given zone arise from private buildings, private transport choices, commercial activity and land use practices – areas beyond the direct control of the local authority. The DZ model acknowledges this explicitly, and local authorities are positioned as facilitators and connectors, responsible for mapping the landscape of emissions and opportunities, convening local stakeholders, developing governance frameworks and creating the conditions in which other actors – households, businesses, schools, utility providers and community organisations – can take meaningful action.

In its Climate Action Plan, Fingal County Council describes this facilitation role as covering stakeholder engagement, capacity-building, developing partnerships, funding support and policy enablement. Galway City Council frames its DZ in the Westside Area of the city as a partnership between the council, utility providers, homeowners, community groups, schools, businesses and Sustainable Energy Communities (SECs). It also linked it with its involvement in the EU Climate Neutral and Smart Cities Mission where it was selected as a pilot city and received funding to develop a retrofit advice centre in Westside.  

Sustainable Energy Communities are locally led, community-based groups supported by SEAI and SEAI-funded programme managers that develop and implement local energy projects; they have been active in Ireland since 2009 and represent an important channel of community energy action that DZs can connect to and build upon. In many cases, they represent forerunner activities and structures, or sources of inspiration, on which DZs have been developed and with which they collaborate, as is the case in Mid-Tipperary, Tullamore, Macroom, and Corca Dhuibhne, among others. 

In rural and island contexts, partnership takes on particular characteristics. The Aran Islands (Oileáin Árann), designated as a Decarbonising Zone by Galway County Council, present a concentrated and measurable case for integrated action: a distinct community implies partnership working with strong community organisations and an established ambition – articulated by local stakeholders – to become energy self-sufficient, eliminate fuel poverty and decarbonise transport to and between the islands. The community co-operative model on the islands, which enabled members to pool funds and access bridging finance for retrofitting programmes, illustrates the kind of locally generated innovation that DZs are designed to surface and support.

The scope of Decarbonising Zone action

Decarbonising Zones are designed to address multiple drivers of emissions simultaneously, rather than focusing on any single sector. The range of issues that DZs can address includes:

• Buildings and energy: residential and commercial retrofitting; heat pump installation and the phase-out of fossil fuel heating; district heating networks; renewable energy generation, including solar photovoltaics; energy efficiency improvements in public buildings.
• Transport and mobility: promotion of active travel (walking and cycling infrastructure); expansion of public transport services and mobility hubs; electric vehicle charging infrastructure; sustainable transport to and between island and remote communities.
• Biodiversity and green infrastructure: urban greening; tree planting; biodiversity corridors; peatland restoration and carbon sequestration in relevant zones.
• Waste and circular economy: waste reduction; materials reuse; composting and food waste.
• Community and social dimensions: fuel poverty reduction; climate literacy and behaviour change; capacity-building for community groups; volunteering and civic engagement in climate action.

The DZ concept is also expected to address wider co-benefits beyond emissions reduction: improved air quality, better health outcomes, enhanced biodiversity, lower noise levels and improved access to green space. These co-benefits are particularly relevant in urban zones where deprivation and poor environmental quality often coincide, and where integrated climate action can deliver improvements in living conditions alongside emissions reductions.

Decarbonising Zones in practice: a spread of approaches

A notable feature of the Irish DZ model is the diversity of spatial contexts it encompasses. The 31 local authorities have selected zones that range from dense urban neighbourhoods to market towns, coastal communities, rural / farming communities and inhabited offshore islands. They have a higher level of deprivation than Ireland as a whole – as measured by the Pobal HP Index of Affluence and Deprivation. This diverse typology is intentional; the aim is to generate a body of tested experience from different contexts so that the lessons learned in each zone can inform approaches taken elsewhere. 

Dublin’s four councils – Dublin City Council, Fingal County Council, South Dublin County Council and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council – have each designated DZs in areas with distinct demographic and built-environment characteristics: Ballymun and Ringsend/Poolbeg for Dublin City Council; Balbriggan for Fingal; Dún Laoghaire & Blackrock for Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, and Clondalkin for South Dublin. In each case, the local authority has combined technical analysis with structured community engagement, recognising that the legitimacy and effectiveness of DZ plans depend on their alignment with local knowledge, values and priorities.

Galway City Council’s DZ in the Westside area covers a 167-hectare residential and mixed-use district. The zone is intended to act as a demonstrator for the rest of the city, with lessons from Westside informing future actions across Galway’s wider built environment.

Tullamore, as Offaly County Council’s designated DZ, represents a market town context – the county town of a largely rural midlands county. The zone draws on Tullamore’s position as a service centre and its commercial and public sector building stock as the largest emissions category, making energy efficiency in non-domestic buildings a priority alongside exploring geo-thermal energy opportunities, active travel and community engagement.

The Aran Islands present perhaps the most distinctive DZ context in the country: an Irish-speaking island community with particular challenges around energy supply, transport connectivity and housing quality, but also with strong community organisation, a track record of co-operative enterprise and a clear communal vision for energy self-sufficiency. 

Building the evidence base

The ESPON-commissioned research, which is being led by Trinomics, in collaboration with the Technological University of the Shannon (TUS) and O’Keeffe Social Research CLG, seeks to gather evidence to address the following question: To what extent can and should climate and sustainability policies be place-based and therefore locally adapted to their circumstances, taking into account national legislation and regulations? While the review will focus primarily on Ireland, it will include comparative analysis to see if lessons could be learned from the implementation of local climate actions in other countries throughout Europe, particularly at the municipal level, and vice versa. The main project stakeholders and DZ Advisory Group are motivated to raise the profile of DZ and to assist local authorities and others, through this review, in refining DZ-related guidance and policy and delivering decarbonising actions.

The review team began by undertaking an assessment of DZ objectives and registers of opportunities (as documented in all local authority climate action plans), and this recorded a very high level of alignment with EU and national policies. Furthermore, the Regional Spatial and Economic Strategies (RSES), developed by Ireland’s three regional assemblies, enhance policy coherence, while also identifying specific regional-level features and opportunities. 

A workshop with council personnel (February 2026) reflected on processes, experiences, outputs and challenges. A survey of local authorities was launched in April, along with parallel and bespoke surveys for civil society organisations and businesses in DZs.  The review team will be undertaking up to nine case studies over the summer, and these are expected to offer a deeper understanding of perspectives and outcomes among a cross-section of DZs.  The case studies will also identify good practice exemplars, and they will look at governance and community engagement. 

The review is also considering the potential for cooperation across administrative borders – particularly all-island cooperation (i.e., Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland) in optimising spaces and methodologies for decarbonising zones and joint achievement of actions and projects.

The research is timely, as Ireland will be hosting the Presidency of the European Council in the second half of 2026, providing opportunities for dissemination and knowledge transfers.

Challenges and enabling conditions

Although the review has only been underway for a few months, Ireland’s councils have enthusiastically embraced it through workshops and surveys.  While it is too early to reach any definitive observations or conclusions, they have identified various challenges and enablers.

Council personnel have reported that gathering robust baseline data, sustaining community engagement processes, co-ordinating multi-stakeholder implementation plans, and monitoring progress against emissions targets all require staff time, specialist expertise and sustained financial support. While there is a general agreement good practices need to be mainstreamed, the level of resourcing (financial and human) is not always commensurate with either the need or appetite for action. 

Securing the participation of private actors – households, landlords, businesses – is essential, but it requires sustained engagement. Much of the emissions reduction required in any DZ will need to come from decisions made by private individuals and organisations that local authorities cannot compel. Building trust, providing practical support and connecting people to available grant schemes and incentive programmes (including SEAI retrofitting grants and supports, LEO grants for businesses) are important enabling activities, but they take time and sustained investment in community relationships.

Coordination across sectors and agencies presents ongoing challenges. Decarbonising emissions in a given area requires action from utility providers (electricity grid upgrades, district heating connections), transport authorities (bus routes, cycling infrastructure), health and education bodies (retrofitting schools and health centres) and national agencies (SEAI, Enterprise Ireland, the Land Development Agency). The council is typically the coordinator of these relationships within a DZ, but it does not hold authority over the other actors involved. 

The absence of dedicated, ring-fenced funding for DZ implementation has been identified as a gap. While DZs can draw on a range of national funding streams – the Urban Regeneration and Development Fund, the Rural Regeneration and Development Fund, SEAI grant programmes, the Climate Action Fund, funding provided under Town Centre First, for public transport and active travel, and others – there is currently no single DZ implementation fund that local authorities can access to drive forward their zone plans in a coordinated way, although the DCEE has stated that a fund for DZs this year will be available shortly. 

The OECD’s 2026 Rural Policy Review of Ireland noted, in a related context, that local authorities’ limited access to discretionary funding constrains their capacity to experiment and innovate; this observation applies to DZ delivery among other local strategies.

Since 2022, when the Local Climate Action Plans were being developed, DCEE has funded climate staff in each council and the CAROs – there are 110 climate-specific staff working across all 31 councils and 4 CAROs. This includes a Climate Action Officer, Coordinator and Community Climate Action Officer. The climate team in each local authority is driving and managing the work within the DZs. 

Comment

The Decarbonising Zone model represents a thoughtfully designed element of Ireland’s climate governance architecture. It rests on a sound premise: that the broad, sectoral ambitions of national climate policy can only be made real at the level of specific places, specific communities and specific actors – and that local government, working in partnership with communities and other local partners and agencies, supported by national government, is best placed to drive that translation.

The model’s explicit embrace of experimentation, innovation and risk-taking deserves recognition. Irish councils are not simply instructed to implement a prescribed set of national programmes within their DZ boundaries; they are asked to innovate, to test new approaches and to generate the evidence base that will allow successful solutions to be replicated elsewhere. This represents a meaningful degree of trust in local government capacity and judgement – and a corresponding responsibility for local authorities to demonstrate that the trust is warranted.

The diversity of DZ types, from dense urban neighbourhoods to island communities, is a structural strength of the approach. Ireland’s 41 DZs collectively constitute a national portfolio of climate experiments covering a wide range of built environments, community profiles and emissions characteristics. If the learning from these experiments is captured systematically and shared effectively, the DZ network has the potential to generate policy-relevant evidence that goes well beyond what any single zone could produce in isolation. The national Advisory Group and inter-agency support structures, including the Climate Action Regional Offices, are important mechanisms for this knowledge transfer.

Securing meaningful community and private-sector participation sits at the heart of the DZ model. Emissions reductions of the scale required cannot be achieved through public sector action alone; they depend on hundreds of individual and organisational decisions about heating systems, travel choices, building upgrades and land management. The councils’ role as facilitators and connectors – convening partnerships, building trust and linking people to practical supports – is at least as important as their role as direct deliverers of climate action. This places a premium on community development skills, stakeholder engagement capacity and the kind of patient, place-based relationship-building that local government is well positioned to provide, but which requires sustained investment and political support.

The DZ concept is ambitious and the timetable is demanding. Ireland’s EPA projections suggest that the country is already significantly off track for its 2030 climate targets, and the buildings and transport sectors – which DZs directly address – are among the most challenging to decarbonise. The preliminary evidence from the ESPON-commissioned review suggests that closing the gap will require not only good plans but funded, staffed and coordinated implementation at local level, and the review will offer a mechanism to explore this over the coming months.

Finally, it is worth noting that the Decarbonising Zone model sits alongside other place-based initiatives, most notably the Town Centre First policy and the Local Climate Action Plans more broadly, that share a common philosophy: that locally led, evidence-based, community-engaged approaches to complex challenges produce better and more durable results than exclusively top-down, nationally prescribed interventions. Top-down and bottom-up approaches can strengthen, support and enhance one another, and DZs provide mechanisms to mobilise stakeholders and harness their inputs. The DZ experience, and specifically the current analysis, presents tangible opportunities to generate evidence.  It represents an important contribution to Irish public policy thinking about how to design and deliver place-based governance for the green transition.