Infrastructure plays a pivotal role in achieving climate neutrality and resilience.
However, infrastructure is also vulnerable to certain risks, and poor management of
infrastructure assets can lead to increased dependency on fossil fuels and lock in
climate-related risks. For this reason, an infrastructure governance framework is
needed that can direct public investments towards sustainability objectives.
To this end, the OECD has provided technical support to the Government of Ireland
to strengthen climate-related and environmental considerations in public infrastructure
decision making (i.e. strategic planning, project appraisal, budgeting). Building
on Irish Public Spending Code and on standardised criteria based on international
good practices, this working paper develops a new methodological approach to assessing
the climate-related impacts of infrastructure and integrate climate-related risk and
uncertainty in the appraisal of infrastructure projects.