Analysis: While the Government's €8.7 billion plan to retrofit 500,000 Irish homes is progressive, the State needs to help people finance retrofitting projects otherwise the plan will fail to live up to its ambition.
By Wendy Rowan and Stephen McCarthy, UCC
Middle Ireland faces the very real prospect of being unable to access the supports and schemes that have been specifically designed by Government to reduce residential carbon emissions.
As researchers looking at ways of measuring and reducing residential emissions, it is an issue that is becoming increasingly pertinent as young families, in particular, risk being unable to access the progressive grants and funding that has been made available by the SEAI.
This shouldn't be read as an overt criticism of the SEAI, rather, it is more of a commentary on the complicated nexus of external factors that risk overtaking the radical and ambitious plans that they have laid out.
As a result, if left unchanged, we risk establishing a dichotomy, where the squeezed middle, a cohort that is largely in favour of climate action, might not be able to afford to access some of the schemes designed to lower Ireland’s residential emissions.
Labelled by critics as being overly ambitious, the Government’s €8.7 billion plan to retrofit 500,000 Irish homes is progressive.
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From RTÉ Radio One's Morning Ireland, first ever widespread national retrofitting programme announced by Government with Rory Clarke, General Manager of House2Home, outlining work opportunities in the retrofitting sector.
Afterall, the plan doesn’t just aim to reduce emissions, it endeavours to help alleviate fuel poverty and to create "green jobs" during our "just transition".
The Free Energy Upgrade Scheme, for example, offers free energy efficiency upgrades to homeowners who receive certain welfare payments. This single scheme has the potential to transform the homes of the 17.5% of the population who are in, or at risk of, fuel poverty.
Likewise, the Warmth and Wellbeing pilot Scheme, which is currently being delivered at no cost to homeowners in specified areas of Dublin, sees the Government and the HSE attempting to provide energy efficiency upgrades that will benefit the recipient’s overall health and wellbeing.
Schemes such as these should be lauded, particularly as the cost of insulation materials has increased by 12% since the beginning of the year.
However, apart the inflated cost of materials, mortgage holders also face the prospect of interest rate rises, which loom ominously on the horizon.
As such, rather than taking on the risk and costs associated with a medium-term loan, homeowners might be tempted to continue filling their 1,000-litre oil tank, which currently costs €700 in Cork.
It’s a perfectly understandable position to hold given the amount of uncertainty that has permeated into our lives during the last 18 months. Doubly so if you find yourself among the cohort of people that have paid inflated values for older houses in recent years.
The irony here though, is that homeowners who cannot afford to upgrade their homes, will face the burden of having to pay increasing carbon taxes, which recently added around €3.52 to the price of a 40kg bag of coal, 76c to a bale of briquettes, and €84 toward the cost of filling a 900-litre oil tank according to Bonkers.ie.
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From RTÉ Radio One's Morning Ireland Colman O'Sullivan reports on plans to retrofit 500,000 Irish homes by 2030 in order to reduce Greenhouse gas emissions.
This means that those who can afford to invest in retrofitting will begin to reap incremental savings as energy costs rise throughout this decade. A factor that is unintentionally embodied in the plan to install 400,000 heat pumps in Irish homes.
From a climate perspective, heat pumps represent an efficient way of heating homes, particularly if the energy used to power them is sourced from the renewable sources.
Extremely efficient, air source heat pumps take air from outside your home and compress it into a hot liquid that is piped into radiators.
Heat pumps, however, are expensive to install, costing anywhere between €8,500 and €14,500.
Although the SEAI provide grants of between €600 and €3,500 towards their installation, homes must first meet specific energy standards.
Obviously, it makes sense that homes should be adequately insulated in order to maximise the efficiency provided by heat pumps. Afterall, it would be wasteful to invest in the technology if all the benefits teemed out of an uninsulated attic.
To that end, the SEAI offer grants of between €400 and €6,000 to install things like dry lining or attic insulation.
However, given that only 18% of Irish homes secured a BER rating of B3 or higher in 2019, some form of deep retrofit may be required, which could end up costing households’ tens of thousands of Euro.
As such, the retro fitting project risks failing to reach people who cannot afford, or see limited value in, schemes that may only provide real returns in the long term.
This isn’t to say that the project is unfair or unjust - although it could do more to work with tenants and landlords who want to upgrade properties. Rather it is to suggest that the State needs to help people finance retrofitting projects.
Otherwise, the plan will fail to live up to the ambition contained within it.
Dr Wendy Rowan is a Post-Doctoral Researcher in Business Information Systems at Cork University Business School at UCC and Dr Stephen McCarthy is a Lecturer in Information Systems and Co-director of the MSc Business Information and Analytics Systems course at the Cork University Business School at UCC. Both are senior researchers on a Horizon2020 funded project ECO2 which developed ACT4ECO, a free education platform that empowers consumers to sensibly consume energy in the home.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
