The Built Environment

The Government of Ireland have published a Climate Action Plan 2019, setting out a course to meet our climate change targets amongst several sectors. The ‘Built Environment’ section suggested that Ireland is falling behind other EU countries in optimising energy efficiency in our homes.  

• The built environment accounted for 12.7% of Ireland’s greenhouse gases in 2017. It is important that we improve the energy efficiency of our buildings, including our homes, workplaces and schools, by meeting higher energy performance standards and by increasing retrofit activity.

• (Increasing energy efficiency in homes) will not only reduce Ireland’s dependence on fossil fuels, but will also improve our living standards by making our buildings more comfortable, healthier, safer, and less costly to heat.

• Our homes use 7% more energy than the EU average and emit 58% more CO2eq. Our buildings are 70% reliant on fossil fuels, including oil fired boilers; over 80% of our homes and other buildings assessed for their BER have a BER rating of C or worse.

Action Points

In response to this, the government has issued a series of guidelines that should help Ireland to meet our climate change targets. The extract from the report below summarise the main plans of action as well as illustrating Ireland’s commitment to energy efficiency.

• We will develop and put in place a new retrofitting delivery model, which will group retrofits together to achieve economies of scale, leverage private finance, and ensure easy pay-back methods.

• We committed to 45,000 energy efficiency retrofits per annum from 2021, including Sustainable Energy Communities. This Plan has stepped that target up to 50,000 and we have committed to design a new delivery model for retrofitting, which will examine grouping large numbers of houses together to achieve economies of scale, leveraging smart finance, and ensuring easy pay-back methods

• A carbon price has been in place since 2010. Carbon pricing can encourage energy efficiency improvements by households and businesses. We are committed to implement a carbon price of at least €80 per tonne by 2030, accompanied by a trajectory of increases over successive annual Budgets

• Increase the number of homes, businesses and rental properties with BERs and DECs as a precursor to regulating for a minimum level of BER upgrade

• More stringent building regulations will apply from the second half of 2019, with all new buildings to be NZEB and existing dwellings undergoing major renovations to meet cost optimal performance equivalent to a BER of B2.

• The establishment of 256 Sustainable Energy Communities has been a significant success in encouraging local actors to work together.

• There is a growing realisation that financial institutions, when they are funding the acquisition of assets, must pay far greater attention to the climate resilience of assets where they risk locking into high-carbon technologies, or other climate vulnerabilities, and in turn, show a greater willingness to fund investment in changes which can make those assets more climate resilient.

All the above information has been extracted from the Climate Action Plan 2019. 

The Thermohouse Solution

At Thermohouse, all of our homes are built to an ‘A’ standard BER rating as well as being completely nZEB compliant. The convenience of our ‘all-in-one’ system allows for a 60% saving in building time compared to traditional building. This means our system can meet these targets under the strict time limits to deliver the changes Ireland needs. Thermohouse buildings are incredibly airtight, allowing for more efficient heating while reducing running costs and complying with building regulations. It’s vital that we take the action required to ensure we meet our climate change targets and the built environment makes up a huge part of these targets. To discover more about Thermohouse, and how it can help deliver a more efficient Ireland, click here.