Retrofitting Ireland (Home retrofit challenge) EE19 EP9

At the centre of Ireland’s incredibly ambitious climate change commitments is an extraordinary target to deep retrofit at least 500,000 homes in the next ten years. This would represent a 50-fold increase in home upgrades in Ireland. What would it take to realise this goal?
Over the last 20 years, Eco Eye has reported on the need for Ireland to invest heavily in upgrading our buildings for both environmental and health reasons. This new national goal to upgrade Ireland’s building stock has never been more ambitious or more necessary.
A new home built today is unrecognisable in energy performance from any built 12 or more years ago, because of much stronger regulations, far superior construction standards and new technologies. This new energy performance standard is what all of our older buildings must strive towards, to meet the energy and climate change challenge of the next 30 years. But the Irish Government don’t have the power to directly retrofit our buildings or force homeowners to comply with new standards for older builds. It’s only homeowners that can make the decision to upgrade. So what would it take to turn this ambition into a reality? The episode will explore new policies, financial models and technologies relevant to homeowners considering retrofitting a home and will explore what this will mean for jobs, fuel costs and property prices in the years ahead.