Thanks to stringent building regulations, Ireland has been building the homes of the future for quite some time. All new builds have to achieve an A energy rating, meaning they are as energy efficient as they can be without being passive.
But, overall, our housing stock is not good enough. The average home in Ireland has a D1 energy rating, which is quite poor in comparison with the rest of Europe.
Ireland has around 500,000 older homes that need to be retrofitted to a rating of B2 or better.
This is not just a good thing to do – we signed up for this in the Paris Climate Agreement, and we have targets to meet, including upgrading those homes by 2030. That's only eight years away.
Like practically everything to do with climate change, it's crucial to remember that "retrofitting" and "energy efficiency" aren't just buzzwords. Fundamentally, they're about making our homes far less dependent on energy and reducing the reliance our homes have on fossil fuels.
Over the last couple of weeks, with the war in Ukraine, Ireland’s dependence on imported fuel has taken on a frightening dimension, especially since we have the potential to produce so much of our own energy from renewable sources.
Given the resultant surge in energy prices, halving your energy bills is obviously one big incentive to retrofit your home.
But people have also gotten the wrong end of the stick about retrofitting.
The focus tends to be on the glamorous things – the stuff that will improve the appearance of your home like putting new windows in. While triple-glazing your windows will have an impact, only 10% of your home’s heat is actually lost through your windows.
Most of the heat – around 35% – goes out through your walls. A further 25% of your heat escapes through your roof, and another 15% through your floor. It’s in this order that you should tackle any retrofitting. The fundamentals are about retaining the heat you produce in your home as much as possible.
On the face of it, it's hard to get excited about insulation, because you can’t see it. But anyone who has been in a retrofitted home will describe how it feels. That’s the big difference – warmth all year round. But a feeling is much harder to sell to a homeowner compared to something they can see.
Over the next eight years, we'll have to convince people that we need to do this. With any other type of construction, people feel like they're getting something tangible – they're building a space, they're designing something, they're creating it. We will need to shift our priorities from constructing space to saving fuel.
While retrofitting will also give homeowners something tangible – heat – it's very difficult to describe that to people.
You will not see that in a magazine, you won't see that in an image, you will not see it on a television programme.
But it's a very tangible feeling to wander around your house in December with just a t-shirt on, in a nice ambient temperature.
A lot of people have come to expect that from their homes, but they tend to achieve it by having the heating on a lot – for as many as 16 hours a day.
As fuel costs continue to rise, that's going to become impossible over the next 10 years.
Even then, we still need to incentivise retrofitting. The grants are there already. If somebody is living in fuel poverty, they're entitled to a 100% grant – so they can get the work done for free.
The only snag is that, to avail of a 100% grant, you must join the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) waiting list and use one of their approved contractors.
At the moment, the waiting list can be up to two years.
That can be accelerated a bit, if people were allowed to use a general contractor.
But the average house is going to cost anywhere from €35,000 to €50,000 to upgrade. That's a huge sum for anybody. Even with the grants that cover 50% of the cost, we're asking homeowners to pay between €17,000 and €25,000 to retrofit their homes.
To do this, people are going to have to top up their mortgages to borrow that €25,000.
Of course, if you look at what they're going to save on their energy bills, there will be a payback there, but it will be incremental, over many years.
It's an ambitious programme, for sure. But we have very ambitious targets that we have to meet. Our housing stock is very poor, and we have half a million homes to upgrade in only eight years – something that is expected to cost €28bn.
The Government has committed to spending €8bn – meaning the average homeowner will have to stump up the remaining €20bn.
That is something that hasn't dawned on us yet. We haven't realised that, in order for this to work, and for us to meet the agreements we've signed up to, the average homeowner is going to have to be instrumental in making it happen.
So the Government must make it easier for the average homeowner. We're going to have to make it cost neutral and give homeowners easier access to finance to get it done.
Without them, this is never going to work. It's never going to work without us all buying into this, without us all realising that this is not somebody else's problem.
Considering renovating, building or retrofitting your home to be more energy efficient? In return for a €95 donation, you can book a consultation with an architect as part of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland's Open Door initiative, which runs from 4–14 May. All proceeds raised go directly to the Simon Communities, which tackle homelessness in Ireland.
