Sir, – I disagree with the Minister for the Environment Eamon Ryan that increasing home insulation grants is a “game-changer” (News, December 8th).
Fossil fuels used for home heating accounts for just 10 per cent of all fossil fuels burned. Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland recommend, when upgrading an older home, that a minimum building energy rating (BER) of B2 be aimed at.
Considering the average BER rating of existing homes, a B2 rating would save approximately half of the current fuel usage.
Therefore, if every home in the country were upgraded, the total savings on fossil fuel usage would be about 5 per cent.
This is hardly game-changing. In any event, getting the two million homeowners in the country to carry out this upgrade would take decades – based on the Minister’s figures for upgrades (46,000 this year and 63,000 next year), even with a significant uplift in completions, this would take more than 20 years and for just 5 per cent reduction in fossil fuel use.
To tackle climate change we must identify the big users and convert them to renewable sources of energy.
For example, the Diageo brewery in Dublin uses as much energy as about 60,000 homes use for home heating. Based on the figures above, if twice this number ie, 120,000 homes, carried out an upgrade, the savings achieved would be the same as the total energy use in Diageo Dublin.
The average cost of a home of grade is about ¤50,000. Therefore, to convert 120,000 homes would cost approximately €6 billion.
I don’t have an estimate, but I believe that converting the Diageo factory to full renewable energy would be significantly less than this.
In addition, as it is concentrated in one site, it would also be much easier to achieve. There are many other industrial plants with significant energy consumption which should be tackled first. – Yours, etc,
BRENDAN MURPHY,
Sandycove,
Co Dublin.
Sir, – Further to the correspondence on retrofitting it is heartening to see the efforts being made by Government to encourage householders to increase the BER rating of their property.
However, I cannot help but wonder what efforts were made, if any , to investigate the enormous costs involved. It is surely the responsibility of the relevant department to ensure that the maximum benefit of the grants falls to the consumer.
It goes without saying that the contractors involved in this work are entitled to a level of profit that supports and reward their work. – Yours, etc,
JOE McSHANE,
Celbridge.
Co Kildare.