Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Constructive, the podcast for the construction people with news, views and expert interviews.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: This is Charlotte dancer for constructive voices. In this enlightening episode of the Constructive Voices podcast, Jackie de Berker talks to Doctor Kieran Byrne, the director of National Retrofit in Ireland. He offers invaluable insights into the country's experience to date and the future of retrofitting in Ireland.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: Hi, this is Jackie Taberka here for constructive voices. I'm really delighted to have Doctor Kieran Byrne here with us today. For those of you who don't know him, for people who are not based in Ireland, Doctor Kieran Byrne is director of Ireland's national retrofit organization and he's a member of the executive leadership team in what's known as Fondia's SEAI, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland. Ciaran, you've a very interesting background also, and you studied biology, as you've mentioned to me. Would you like to give a fuller version of who you are, both personally and professionally?
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Yeah. Thanks, Jackie, and hello to all of your listeners. So I suppose we'll start with the current stuff. Right now, I'm the director of national retrofit in Ireland's energy agency. So many european countries, in fact, many countries have a national energy agency focusing on the transition towards sustainable energy use. In Ireland, it's the SEAi the sustainable energy Authority of Ireland. And my little piece of the pie is about retrofitting a domestic property. So getting homeowners right away, the length and breadth of Ireland to retrofit their homes, to make them more energy efficient and ultimately use less, to generate less carbon emissions. By way of background of a bit of a mixed category, as you mentioned, I'm originally a biologist, a zoologist, and spent a long period of time working in that area. I did a little bit of a pivot many years ago, and I qualified as an accountant in the middle of all of that. So I would have a yin, as they call it, for business too. But also the reason for that was to be able to speak biologists in the biological language and the finance people in the finance language. And I'm doing a version of that now in the current job because we have an awful lot of work to do about industry on the retrofitting side. So you've got a huge interaction with engineers, architects, professionals, technical people, but we have to translate all of that stuff and in a way that homeowners can understand it and get involved. So that's what I'm doing at the moment. We have extraordinary targets at a national level we've extraordinary government support at the national level and everybody is watching us and many, many, many people are getting involved in redfinning their homes. So it's very positive.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: It is, and it's an exciting time, Kieran, because even though I'm not based currently in Ireland, I'm in touch a lot with irish people. And yes, it's a really, it's a huge hot, very hot topic at the moment.
Now, from my research and getting to know you a little bit, it seems we have at least three things in common. We're both Trinity College alumni, Guardian newspaper readers, and both of us are very, very concerned about the environment. Now, I know it's kind of a bit of a sweeping question and probably hard to answer on some levels, but how do you feel Ireland is doing in general when it comes to the likes of climate change and biodiversity, which are obviously linked?
[00:03:14] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks, Jackie. And I suppose we do have those three things in common.
On your specific question. At a general level, Ireland is doing quite well, though I think one political party many years ago had a slogan of a lot done more to do, and I think you could certainly in this context. So we have a suite of european environmental legislation, and that has been extraordinarily helpful in trying to get us to pivot, to move, to do things kind of a greater speed. But it's my personal view, having worked both in the environmental sector for many, many years and also laterally in this kind of, in the building construction environment, that people are really kind of getting it now. Quite a number of years ago, the environmental piece, climate change piece was kind of those people over there. It's become mainstream now. Your average person on the street has now owners recognize that, you know what? We have a biodiversity crisis as well, and we are accelerating the pace and also the impact. We're nowhere near there yet, but we're certainly getting cooled up to get there.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: Okay, well, that's obviously, that's a positive start here. On one thing that's come up in conversations with other guests and people who've contributed their time to the course that we have designed about biodiversity, net gain for the english law.
Noticed that Covid had quite a significant effect on people's attitude towards nature. What do you think yourself?
[00:04:39] Speaker B: Very privileged where I live here in Dublin, I'm not that far away from a park. And when we had the. At the time, it sounds like a long time ago, two kilometer restrictions. We spent a lot of time down in that park. And what people noticed, firstly noticed things. They were in the park of the number of people out in the environment, which is beneficial, even if you never liked nature, it's beneficial to mental health, et cetera. But they started to notice things. And, Jackie, we're of a similar vintage, of course, on the art, we don't.
[00:05:06] Speaker A: Tell too many people that care on our.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: No, no, we keep that under wraps. So what we did talk about in our pre chat was, you know, like back in the day, going back many years ago and early, if you drove down a roadway and you did that, you called it the splat test. Look at your windscreen in your car and you see a whole smorgasbord of moths and flies.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: So at the current time, that does not happen. So I got Covid piece people plugged into nature in a way they possibly hadn't ever before, or maybe they reconnected. And I think that's part, and I would be firmly of you, that's part of the reason that the dialogue around biodiversity climate is starting to come into the center.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: It is. It's fascinating, and I think it just depends on each person's background. But, you know, I like yourself. I grew up in Dublin. I was the city girl, but we used to holiday in the west of Orange and Connemara. And it was really only, I suppose now that all of these issues are so urgent that I realize, in fact, I had a huge connection with nature right there. And you just don't realize it until you have those triggers again, for whatever reasons might come up. Now, I noticed, Kieran, looking far too often on LinkedIn, that there has been quite a lot of biodiversity officers appointed in Ireland around this time, haven't there?
[00:06:20] Speaker B: Yes, there are. There has been a big drive, mostly by the local authorities, because they have obligations and Ireland Inc. Obligations. So what you'll see as well is the biodiversity officers are there to bring the awareness of biodiversity into how we do our planning. Go back to that point for a long time. It was a kind of thing you did decide in second thought or an afterthought. Now it's front and central in the planning process and design process. I was only looking at one of our state utilities in terms of air grid, and talk about their. Their ecological consultants, and they bring this ecology and biodiversity approach right at the very start of our projects, rather than kind of an afterthought or something has to be done. And you'll see, and again, listeners will see, certainly in Ireland, everywhere you go, rather than having every hedgerow and every piece of grass moan within an inch of his life, you will see the biodiversity science everywhere. And, you know, those little pockets of wildlife to help the insects grow. That's part of the manifestation of what we're about here.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: We've had. I mean, I say we because I'm still irish. Obviously we've had stuff like no mo may or isn't it?
[00:07:19] Speaker B: Yeah, no more May.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: Yeah, different months. And obviously that's a great way to like, to make it just more and more inherent in the national sort of psyche, if you like, that we, you know, this is part of who we are. Obviously, Ireland is a beautiful, green island, and so I think it's an important thing, you know, those kind of little things. It seems like a little thing, but it's important to get it into the. Into the minds of Irish people, isn't it?
[00:07:44] Speaker B: That's right, that's right. And actually, just go back to my previous role. We would have done a lot of work in biodiversity. And, you know, again and again, I quite like the environment and gardening, and there was always this kind of concept that your garden had to be perfect. If it wasn't perfect, it wasn't good. So we're starting to kind of reach out, and particularly around the local authorities as well, where they're not as mowing every field within an inch of its life. And groups like tidy towns are realizing actually having biodiversity along the riverbank and having areas where it is more naturalized. That's part of the package. And even lately, in our local village, I see the tidy townspeople doing some significant work in areas where it's absolutely perfectly neat and tidy, but leaving a lot of other areas kind of to grow more wild for the biodiversity, which is great to see. So we're moving, we're shifting the dial slowly.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: It is. It's really interesting times. Challenging, but interesting times. Now, let's move on to your main topic, Geron, because retrofitting is obviously what you're heading up in Ireland. It's central to, you know, to our country's climate, action and sustainability commitments. For those people who are not familiar. Exactly. I think it's quite common knowledge at this stage. But for those who are not familiar, what exactly is retrofitting and why is it so crucial, Kieran, right now?
[00:08:55] Speaker B: Yeah, well, thanks. And that's a great question. You're right. A lot of people know about it, but then a lot of people don't. The retrofitting is basically improving the energy performance of your home. And in the irish context, and in fact, much of the northern european context, it's about insulating your home, because typically in the northern european areas, we use most of our energy in the winter time when we're heating our homes. But to retrofit the home is to make it more energy efficient, to make it more comfortable, to make it cheaper to run, and also to decrease the amount of carbon dioxide emissions. And where they come from is when you're burning something. So if you have a boiler in your home, an oil boiler, many cases, or a gas boiler or some cases a solid fuel stove, you're burning something to create the heat to warm up your home. We cannot keep burning things at the rate we're doing it. So we need to retrofit the homes to make them much more energy efficient. So whatever we use, we use a. A lot less of it. And ideally we then move to renewables such as heat pumps, which is electrified heating. So that's what we're all about in Ireland, trying to get people on that journey from where their home is at the present time to a much more energy efficient home.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Excellent. Okay, so as an old proverb says, may you live in interesting times. Ciaran, we're definitely living in interesting times. There's no doubt about it. Now. There's a range of factors, obviously both domestic and international, that, you know, make an impact on the retrofit sector, ways that we've never seen before.
And that is loosely borrowed from an article that you wrote yourself, Kieron, entitled retrofit means business opportunities. That is part of the good news. Can you elaborate a little bit?
[00:10:32] Speaker B: I can, and I love your use of the proverb. At the start and many years ago, somebody said that to me, that maybe we live in interesting times. And I thought, that's lovely, thank you very much. And then subsequently I realized, apparently it's a curse. May you live in interesting times. And we are actually in those interesting times. So from a commercial side of things and from a business side of things, in Ireland, we have about 2 million homes. We have about one and a half million, our older home, etcetera, and practically every one of those has to be upgraded. So in the business side of things, there's a massive societal opportunity for us to generate new types of jobs, new jobs in new locations, and to kind of, I suppose, leverage a significant amount of government funding to help homeowners improve the performance of their homes. We have to do this. So on a moral level, we have to do, because the planet is effectively burning or heating up at the rate of knots. And we talked ABOut this, impacts on climate and biodiversity. We're also plugged into national legislation, national policy, and also at the European level. So two big pieces of legislation at the European level would be the energy efficiency directive and the renewable energy directive. Now, I'm not going to get into the nuances because they're highly complex, but the energy efficiency directive says basically whatever you're using, use less of it. So you need to use less energy to heat your home. Ergo we need to insulate. Renewable energy director says when you're using energy, try not to burn things. Use renewables, which is the heat pump. So the opportunity in Ireland is to shift all of those existing homes, those apartment blocks, those big ones, those small ones, to make them much more energy efficient. But there's a huge opportunity for homeowners to make their homes more efficient and cost less easier to run. There's a huge business opportunity as well.
[00:12:10] Speaker A: There really is, yeah. So it's a massive opportunity.
Up to now, Kieran, what kind of methods have been used? Of course, you've mentioned the heat pump, and we will talk in more detail about that later. But what kind of retrofitting methods, just to say in Ireland, in comparison to maybe some of the mediterranean countries?
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Yes. Well, that's a great question because I know this is a wider podcast. In Ireland, the primary focus is on heating in the wintertime. So we don't really have air conditioning in the domestic sense. So a lot, a lot of what we're doing is around that heating. So a lot of our measures are around insulation for your typical house, right? Four walls and a roof. Now, we won't go into huge engineering detail. You can put insulation if you have a. What we are more modern house construction, where you have a cavity wall. So it's basically two leaves of block. You can pump that cavity wall with insulation. So the more modern houses, you can literally drill little holes, pump it with either bead or foam that insulates between the walls. That's relatively inexpensive and quite quick to do in many cases, because of the construction of the house. There's not a cavity wall. It might be solid block or something like that. So what we can do then is we can either insulate the outside of the wall or the inside. The outside we call external wall insulation, or it's more kind of commonly called the wrap. Because you typically wrap the house insulation, it's very popular. I think we've increased 42% of the number of houses being wrapped in the last number of years.
It transforms the house both in terms of the energy performance, because it's now wrapped in insulation, but also there's a fresh coat of render and things like that put on the house that can really freshen it up the other side, then go into the inside walls are the internal wall insulation, and that's where you don't have a wrap. If you can't pump the wall, the rack may not be an option. For various reasons. You move to internal insulation that is not as popular in Ireland because there's an awful lot more disruption, because typically you must take everything off the walls and things like that. So what we see with internal insulation, that's most common where people are doing, you know, what are gunning a house, where maybe they buy a house and they're going to completely redo it. It's quite efficient to do internal insulation at that stage, but to do it on its own, maybe not as popular, but certainly the cavity and the wraps. So fundamentally, you're insulating the walls relative to southern Europe, where heating in the summertime is a big issue. You're talking about air conditioning, things like that. We're all about keeping the heat in in the winter.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: Sure, of course. And I have to, I have the pleasure of having lived in the two environments. And yes, it's a big difference. Of course it is. So one quick question about the methods, the wrapping, for example. That sounds like, it sounds great and everything, but surely that must be quite expensive.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: It's relatively expensive, but we provide significant grants. When I say relative, I mean everything is relative because there's an awful lot of houses being done with the wrap. There is a lot of people that have kind of money saved up in Ireland are happy to do it on that. It does cost money, unfortunately, in a wider sense. And actually, a lot of people across Europe have seen this post Covid. So towards the end of 2021, and certainly for 2022 in Ireland, we saw that return to business as normal, and we saw extraordinary construction sector inflation and in fact, extraordinary inflation across the economy. So a lot of european economies had what we call cost of living crises. So you break that down in the construction sector, we saw huge, huge increases. So prices shot up, certainly, but it certainly stabilized a lot now. But we provide the irish authority significant grant support to do those kind of works for homeowners.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. Now, just going back to last year, in November of 2023, there was some media coverage that followed a study that was carried out by Kingspan and three Cal and the examiner covered it, saying Ireland's position as one of the better global performers in reducing emissions from buildings is threatened by the slow pace of retrofitting the new study claims. And the study the advisors said that the irish building materials calculated that the number of retrofits on buildings last year, which would have been 2022, was only around 10% of the annual target, with building stocks still dependent on fossil fuel heating. Now, Ireland is among many nations where progress has stalled or even worsened, according to the Global Retrofit Index.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: Comments Kieran yeah, I wouldn't wholly agree with them at all points, and not unsurprisingly coming from the agency. I suppose the old trick is let the numbers do the speaking for themselves. And in 2021 we would have supported about 15,000 upgrades on homes in Ireland. In 2022 we would have supported up 27,000. 2023 we went up to 47,000. So you can see the jump and scale on the retrofits. Okay, so we are increasing at a really significant rate. Budget wise, we would have spent 100 million, then we end 192 million, then we went up to nearly 300 million. So we're really ramping it up. Is it? Do we need to do more? Absolutely, we need to do more. We're in the midst of a climate crisis and an energy crisis, so we need to really do more to hit the targets that have been set for us in Ireland are extraordinary and we need to do more. But a really important point is all of our models and projections talk about this kind of significant growth at a point where retrofit becomes normalized. And we kind of touched this in the start of the conversation, where more and more and more people are starting to realize, you know, I need to do something in my house. They're aware of the word retrofitting, they know the broad things they need to do. So we need to kind of get that growth up to a point. And then we talk about a hockey stick increase, which is a really significant increase towards the end of the decade. So there's lots and lots of studies out there looking at various elements and points and things like that, and they all have really interesting, you know, conclusions. And I agree with many, I don't necessarily agree with everything, but we're doing significant amount of work here in Ireland, and the government itself had put in historic levels of funding into the retrofit sector. The point where the budget this year for Retford is just shy of a half a billion euros alone for Ireland on the Redfin sector, and is programmed to go by another hundred million next year. So there's no shortage of ambition, there's no shortage of money. We're building the supplier base in terms of the labor, which is possibly a limiting factor at the moment. And we're certainly seeing the market which is homeowner able to say, we need to do something here.
[00:18:27] Speaker A: Okay, that was going to be a question that came to mind as you were speaking here on which. Which you've pretty much answered yourself, like, it's much like biodiversity. You know, I've been studying this a lot in the UK because of the law that's come out on the 12 February this year in England, their handicap there is a lack of ecologists and so much the same as what you've just said there a challenge in Ireland would be, are there enough builders around or specialists to do the work that we have the ambitions and the funds to do?
[00:18:58] Speaker B: Yeah, and that's a great question. And it is a challenge because you see where the retrofit side of it is really a section or sub sector of the wider construction industry. So when you look at Ireland as a whole, one of the other big government programs of which is very political also is the housing for all. So like a lot of european countries, we need to really scale the provision of housing. So that's new bills. So there's a huge focus on new bills. But when you look at the labor force, you say, okay, a lot of us taken into new bills, we're trying to get a lot of younger people into the country because unfortunately, when we had our recession in the mid two thousands, an awful lot of the building trades kind of really came back and a lot of people emigrated. So we're now at the point where we're scaling up, but we're kind of, I wouldn't say in competition, but we're certainly in the same space as the new builds are trying to get retrofits, which are similar but different skills as well. And even then, when you get under that, just pure numbers, you have certain specific traits that people wouldn't necessarily think of, but they're important because things like scaffolders, qualified scaffolders, you can't do the external wall insulation we talked about, unless you have scaffolding up. And to put scaffolding up, you need people to do it that are qualified things with plasters as well, sort of specific trades that are pinch points that can actually impact the whole thing.
[00:20:07] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it's a fascinating, a fascinating topic itself, going back again to last year, Ciaran, on the 28 December, there was a headline that read retrofit schemes on offer to homeowners are best in Europe. Eamonn Ryan insists. Now, what schemes, which is obviously a very positive headline, what schemes does Ireland currently have on offer. I think there's quite a lot going on. And how did these compare Kieran with other countries, especially in Europe?
[00:20:33] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's good. That was him. And actually I'd agree with him. He's the minister, he's the boss. But I fully agree with him on that one because we were doing off the work as the irish energy agent, we'd loop in a lot of our colleagues in Europe. And what we've done is we've basically simplified all of the schemes. We've commoditized them in a way that you can just look, we have a menu of grant options. There's no equivocation as to what I might or might not get funded if I have 50 m² or 45 m². We have a menu of grant options for the different types of measures. There are three or four schemes, really, but I'll talk about them briefly.
And the other thing, by the way, is we have a huge pot of money and they're demand led. And the government has set clear national targets. So a lot of places across Europe, Europe there's targets. They might be more at a local level or a municipality level. The clarity around how you do it isn't quite the same. The relative targets, relative to the population aren't the same. And the money supported isn't the same. So we are really ahead of the curve in terms of the european experience. But at the moment, our schemes are broken down into kind of four main ones. First and foremost is the one stop shop. And the one stop shop basically is where you come to Ireland. If you want to get the whole house energy upgrade done in one go, you will go to a one stop shop. They will provide you with a project manager will take your project from conception right to completion in one, with one intervention, one company, one project manager doing the whole job. And on one level is revolutionary. Another level is very simple, like a lot of revolutions are. It's basically simple concept. And many of your listeners, for example, would have had extension work still in their home. There's something like that now. You contact a builder and you decide what you're doing or activate might develop the plan, the builder builds it. What the homeowner does not know is the builder subcontracting a carpenter, he's subcontracting a plaster, he's bringing an electrician. You talk to the builder, the builder builds the extension, it's done. The one stop shop has that exact same concept for energy upgrades. So rather than the homeowner have to figure out which windows, which doors, which wall. I insulate. How do I put the heat pump? Which one comes where? What size heat pump do I need? The one stop shop will do the entire project. So they'll come in and do an assessment of your home. They'll tell you where it is from an energy performance level, they'll look at the measures they're going to put in place and they'll do a projection of where it's going to be. And then once agree with the homeowner, they'll manage the whole process. Now that obviously is doing a home house solution. A lot of people aren't in the position to a home health solution. One go. So we have what they call, what we call the better energy homes program. But from a european perspective, what it is, is individual upgrade measures. So people might do one measure we talked earlier on in the podcast about, for example, cavity wall. They might look, I can't afford to the whole house, but I will get my cavity walls pumped. Brilliant. We support them with grant funding to do that. And they can, we have a list of contractors they could go to our contractors, pick the contractor, and we support them to do that measure. And if in a year's time or two years time they want to do another measure, they can pick that off the menu as well and do that one. The third program is very strong in energy poverty. Now we're supporting a lot of people who would be in energy poverty. It's called the warm home scheme, which is quite revolutionary as well. It's a fully funded energy upgrade scheme where our agency, through a panel of contractors, manage the entire energy upgrade for energy poor homes. So if you qualify on this particular scheme, you apply onto our website. If you qualify, we'll allocate, we'll do a survey of your home, we'll do a pre building energy rating, which is in european terms Energy performance Cert. So we look at a rating, say where is the home in terms energy performance? We'll identify the appropriate measures at home. We'll allocate a contractor, we'll deliver the measures and we'll do a postworks energy rating or energy performance search. And then we have another program which is slightly different, but it links communities and businesses together in relation to getting upgrade works done. But the key point is they're all based on the menu. The warmer homes are slightly different because it's fully funded, but any of the other schemes are based on the menu. People can get on the website, see what I might be able to achieve, and it's broadly speed the qualification criteria that we won't fund a measure that's already been funded, which makes common sense.
And then there's certain eligibility in terms of the year of the home. So pretty much all of the installation measures, if the home is built before 2011, they qualify for those.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. That's sounding pretty comprehensive, Kieron, from how you've explained it so well, going back to the irish government's ambitions.
So another excerpt from an article. The government's highly ambitious goal is to have 500,000 homes retrofitted to b two energy rating by 2030. A tall order given the level of uptake so far, 170 million of the 300 million set aside in grants for the scheme was not taken up in 2022.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great.
Yeah, well, first in the first piece, the ambitions, 500,000 homes. But just to be clear with listeners, what we're trying to do is decarbonize the home. So actually the metric is around carbon dioxide emission reduction because what we want to achieve is reduction in carbon dioxide. How we're going to do that is the number of homes. So we're trying to make sure people are just kind of two dials. So it's not just doing 500,000 homes, it's making sure we achieve the carbon dioxide emissions reduction because that's fundamentally why we're doing it. So we started in 2019 with a climate action plan and we've had a really strong government focus issue with a climate action plan of significant budgets. On the figures quoted, there's a kind of a slight kind of bit of difference between the global ministry figure and the figure we get allocated within the retrofit budget in the SEAI and I can report happening that we have done very, very well in terms of our budget spent. 2020 and 2021 were difficult years because 2020 certainly we were in the middle of COVID 21 is a little bit like that. And by 22 we kind of started to spin out of COVID a little bit. But broadly speaking, we spend about anywhere between 90 95% of the allocated budget to us on an annual basis and we're getting better at it. Now, the early years 21 and 22, Covid certainly did impact and we saw really acutely supply chain impacts because again, for your listeners, anybody might be more plugged into business. If you remember places like Shanghai. Shanghai got to do an irish redfish. Some of the big chinese ports are opening and closing. You know, material supply chains took forever, took an off long time. And so for example, a practical example would be the lead time for windows. When the whole house record was being done. The lead time for windows was typically around six weeks. That went out to three, four, five months in some cases. So that kind of slowed things down in terms of spend and then, you know, small, small things now, but big things then. If you recall, some of your listeners may actually recall there's a wee little ship that stuck in the Suez Canal for a couple of weeks on the impact that had on global shipping. So it's those kind of things. And so people really making that connection between Shanghai poor closing and why is it taking longer for my retreat in Dublin is material supply chain certainly kind of stretch out a bit. But we've been extraordinarily good about spending our budget because demand is growing. So you're trying to match two sides of it there, Jackie.
You build up the supply chain, but the supply chain builds up if the demand is there. So we need people to pivot into it and start kind of creating that demand.
[00:27:46] Speaker A: Okay, so, I mean, you know, we've touched obviously on labor as well being been sort of one of the other challenges. But I suppose would it be fair to say, Ciaran, from everything you've said so far, that you feel now we're on more of a role to sort of like the demand has, you know, start. Started to kind of kick in, like, fairly significantly, hasn't it?
[00:28:06] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. And my job is to make sure it stays that way because, you know, we as a human, as a population, we switch on to things, those jobs and things. So, you know, things get normalized and then they go off into the back page. 2022, for example, we reprofiled all of our grants. Unfortunately, very shortly after we had the Ukraine war and we had energy price spikes. So so many people went, wow, I need to do something with my home to reduce energy. And we saw huge demand, 22, 23. We want to keep that level of demand up. But yeah, there is a kind of a thick. And it's just a lived experience. You know, when you're standing on the side of the football pitch and a couple of years ago, people would look at you and go, that's the weird guy that sells insulation. Now everybody sidles up to the pitch and goes, I have a house and I want to do whatever. And he knows you can. That general awareness of I need. I know I need to do something, you know?
[00:28:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:59] Speaker B: And like in irish context, and this is very particularly irish, when we had a small little matter of a world many, many years ago and it became the national topic of discussion, one of our irish football captains was sent home from the World cup back in the day, it was just a national topic. I'd love retrofit to be the national topic. It's not quite there yet, but an awful lot more people are aware of it and realize if I haven't started, I need to do something.
[00:29:26] Speaker A: I mean, this is just a random comment that I don't expect you to even reply to. But imagine some kind of a sexy ad campaign that might help. Something like going back to. Because as you said earlier on, with this same vintage or a similar vintage going back to the Guinness dance. But something obviously, you know, maybe, maybe more interesting and without alcohol involved, probably.
[00:29:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, as well.
But no, the, actually, the timing is good because we've had a number of hyper profile campaigns that were just in the process of releasing the next one, like in the next couple of weeks. And that is going to be focusing, interestingly enough, to be on kind of two parts. Part one is, again, keeping the awareness up because even be it that, I mean, I talk about retweet all day, every day. And when you live in that kind of little environment, you think everybody talks about it. But actually, I always use the phrase walk a mile in a person's shoes because the average person in the street is trying to do their day job, keep going and, you know, busy lives. So Redfin might be on their agenda. So we need to keep the awareness up. But the other thing we're going to, the campaign really importantly is heat pumps. Because going back to that point, we talked about b two s and carbon dioxide emissions. Broadly speaking, we need to stop burning things in our houses. And to do that, we need to change our heating systems from burning based, you know, fossil fuel burning based heating systems to electrical based heating systems that are backed up by renewable energy. So we need to transition to heat pumps at scale. So the campaign is going to be focused around heat pumps. And I did mention, I think we talked earlier on, but this is year of the heat pump.
[00:30:53] Speaker A: I was going to say that to you. I was so amused. And actually, you've just mentioned Shanghai, of course not, not too long ago. So I was so amused when I do my research for today's chat, and I came across the fact that, yes, it is like as if it's a chinese new year and 2024 is the year of the heat pump, which I think is fantastic.
Tell us more. Tell us more, Kieran.
[00:31:18] Speaker B: Yeah, that's my kind of self declaration, if you want. I'd love more people to join me in that. But it's around this piece on the retro and like, I try and kind of widen the circle of friends a little bit. You know, it's not just the retro. We collectively as a society, cannot keep burning things in the way we're burning them, but just in terms of the efficiency. So we're trying to get people to stop burning things. We just can't keep burning things at the way we're doing it. But in terms of oil or gas, you're talking about a high efficiency oil boiler. One unit in gives you 0.9 out the other end of it, whereas a highly efficient heat pump, one unit in gives you three units out the other end of it. So they're way more efficient as a heating technology than burning oil or gas.
[00:32:00] Speaker A: Okay, fantastic. So one country that I came across that I was curious if Ireland could learn from was Lithuania. What are your thoughts on that in terms of retrofitting?
[00:32:13] Speaker B: Yeah, Lithuania is a great example. And actually, I know that the high profile article saying that they've spent nearly a billion euros on retrofit. And actually, though, have we. We spent nearly a billion euros, so we're right up there with them. But we learned from each other in Europe, which is great, because Lithuania, for example, would have an awful lot of apartment blocks. So it would have been potentially post soviet era kind of apartment blocks. So we certainly have to learn from them and how they retrofit apartment blocks at scale, because apartment living in Ireland is relatively new in terms of how we do it. So they'd have a lot more experience over that side of it. Interestingly enough, as well, given their geographic location next to Russia and the geopolitical situation, I think the message you have in Lithuania can be taken up a lot. They realize they have to unhitch themselves from what would have been russian gas very, very quickly. So it's that piece around. And again, it's back to that sharing in Europe. And as a national energy agency, we would go to a lot of european meetings and we'd kind of show our wares, if you want, of how we've done it. But equally, we'd learn from other countries. And Lithuania would be good like that. And also things like linking in government grants within innovative types of finance. And so, for example, in Ireland, we've done a bit of that, but we're really proud that only, literally, only the last couple of weeks, we've launched a low cost, government backed loan. So for a homeowner, you can get a really significant capital grant from the government to go and do the works. You can now go down to a financial institution and get a loan which is government backed. So it's a much, much lower interest rate than in just the general marketplace specifically to support the retrofit works. You're now linking the kind of the grant with the finance to really incentivize the homeowner. And Lithuania has done things like that as well. So certainly we have a lot to learn from.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: Excellent. And you mentioned as well, of course, in Europe, you know, that we're in touch with other countries and showing our wares also, as you put it. What are the countries that come to mind? I'm sure there must be other countries that you've collaborated with at meetings. Who's interesting?
[00:34:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, to be honest with you, I find them all interesting because what you hear typically is you hear about individual projects at utility or maybe municipality level. Some of the common themes we're having in Europe is around, for example, apartment blocks. And there's this issue around shared ownership, and it typically happens where you have a mixed tenure apartment. There's also this common issue that we're trying to pick apart is to do with kind of the rental piece where who gets to benefit from the retrofit in relation to if a landlord upgrades a home, how do you share the benefits? So there's some really interesting projects in Europe around how the benefits of retrofitting rental homes have upgraded, because these are all cohorts of homes that we have to address in Ireland. So, and this is something very important for the listeners. We're on a journey, and we're at the early part of this journey, so it's not an event. Sometimes people think, this is it. We're at Ireland. This is the menu, this is it. No, we're going to keep crafting, innovating, creating, to make sure that we can get packages and solutions for every court of homes, be it a rental home, be it an apartment block, a single ownership apartment block, a mixed tenure apartment block. So it's linking to projects at the european level, hear how different groups are doing it. Also, for example, linking in communities. We haven't really touched on that yet, but fundamental to being successful on the whole retrofit journey is making sure communities are involved and are brought with us, because if people don't buy into this at an individual community level, it's not going to happen.
[00:35:48] Speaker A: No, I suppose that links very much into the fact that I was thinking the word lifestyle, Kieran, as you were saying, that it's not like an event, it's a lifestyle in a sense, isn't it? Just in the same way as we're going to pop back into biodiversity, and it's all interlinked, really, at the end of the day. So if the community are feeling like, oh, our area looks nicer, okay, it's a bit more wild, but nature's coming out and there's more birds singing again, you know, in the same way as when I go back home, because, of course, I did live in Ireland for much of my life, you know, I don't feel as cold as I used to because it's been, you know, my house has been retrofitted and it's much more efficient now and cozy, you know.
[00:36:22] Speaker B: Yeah, that's exactly it, Jackie. It's all of those pieces together, not one in isolation, apart from the engineering. And believe me, there's lots of that in terms of energy and kilowatts and all that stuff. There's a whole piece of work around the social side of things, the benefits that people feel from a retrofit at home. So there's piece of work done. There's quite a number of piece of work done, but one was done in the irish context. They looked at people, for example, that had chronic respiratory diseases, they retrofitted their homes, and the Irish that. The project involved scientists from the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, who have all of the, you know, the statistical analysis to allow us to quantify specifically the benefits of retrofit on health. And they're shown really, really good and statistically significant benefits. So retrofit in the house is not this esoteric kind of architecture thing that people do. It actually improves people's lives. We know, for example, on the health side of it, like long exposure to cold does have impacts on blood pressure and heart health and things like that. You know, we're going to see in Ireland, much milder, damper conditions, so there's going to be lots more proper potential for mold growth and things like that. So retrofitting the home will really improve people's living when you tie that into the wider environment. So you just gave the example of, you know, there's more biodiversity environment. We're letting things grow, we're aware much greater levels of awareness on the importance of greenery and green spaces, on mental health and physical health, etcetera. So it's all plugged in together. So that's why, in a weird kind of way, as I said at start, I'm a kind of a biodiversity biologist type person. I'm talking to the engineers at the moment, but it's all pointing in the same direction.
[00:38:00] Speaker A: Absolutely. I'm reading a wonderful book at the moment by a woman who's soon to be a guest, Alexandra Stead. And very beginning of the book that basically goes into the fact that, you know, our biggest problem is we feel disconnected from nature, but in fact, that we are part of nature.
[00:38:21] Speaker B: That's really interesting.
I would agree with her fully. And actually just reading there, Dave, David Attenborough is a life on our planet. His more recent book, he actually talks about the exact same concept, that it's not us in nature, we're in nature.
We touch over the course of a conversation about our similarities and our similar vintage and holidaying in the west of Ireland and things like that, and our experiences of, you know, that connection. And I haven't read Alexander's book, but I suspect she's saying that connections in modern society has been broken. And we touch on it then and we, we reconnected at a society level during that Covid piece, and people reconnected. Now, some people, unfortunately, didn't keep it up for various reasons, but relative to where our parents or our grandparents were, our connections with nature are nothing like they used to be. So it's so important that we get back out. And I mean, I'm here talking about retrofit, but just being aware of your environment, and then you start being aware of yourself and the environment and what can I do to change and things like that. So that's all part of that journey.
[00:39:21] Speaker A: Absolutely. So going back to retrofit, which is, of course, the main topic here on what do you feel most proud of? Of what we've achieved in Ireland thus far?
[00:39:31] Speaker B: Wow, that's a great question. I think if I can give a holding answer for the moment and I'll revert in 2031, I think what I'm most proud of is that we've really driven on at scale, that we're bringing it front and center, that the conversation has been normalized and we've moved the dial from the what is it? To the where do I start type conversation. That's, for me, is most proud. And fundamentally, though, it's interesting because we did a thing recently in our workplace, and we looked, you know, asked a little one of these mentimeeter kind of a poll things, and they said, why do you work for this? My organization is the SEAI, and the vast majority of people in the call put a version of I want to make a difference.
[00:40:09] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:40:10] Speaker B: As the rationale. So what we're doing in the retrofit and is we're making a difference, I keep saying to my troops, every time we support somebody to do a retrofit, to do a cavity wall pump or external wrap, you might say, oh, yeah, architecturally engineering, it's a wrap, but we're helping that person to reduce their energy emissions. And that's really good.
[00:40:28] Speaker A: It is. Absolutely. No, I agree 100%. Now, the last couple of questions that I have, one or two, you've sort of touched on them earlier, but they're more for the sake of the, you know, the homeowner, the end user, if you like. Kieran. So let's just go through them quickly because you're obviously, you know, Ireland's top expert. If a retrofit needs to be done in stages, how, you know, how would you prioritize what should come first?
[00:40:53] Speaker B: KIERAN well, that's a great question. And actually just a simple, just kind of more or less applicable across Europe. Assess. We have a little tree step. Assess. Insulate renewables. Let's break it down. Assess. Figure out where the home currently is. So you might be on a street of homes. They all look the same, but your neighbors done some work before. You've done less, you've done more. So assess. And that means in the Irish Connex, get one of the building energy ratings or an energy performance search says, well, where is my home's performance currently at? Most of those will give some form of an advisory report or technical report that says, look, your home is at this level and say, in the Irish Connex, we'll call it, say, a billing energy rating c, which is an. In the european countries, they tend to call it energy performance. So you're the sea level. So, okay, mid range. Here's what you have. And oftentimes they'll recommend, here's what you should do. And in many cases they'll give also a priority ranking. Right, of what you should do. But in our little three step guide, we say assess where you are. Insulate first. So we want people using less energy. So the more insulated your home is, the less you'll use. So it's really important to insulate first and then you move to renewables. So having insulated. And so whether the cavity, the attic, internal external underfloor, you insulate your home. So no matter what you're using, you're using less of it. We're now saying go into the renewables to start helping put on your heat pump and things like that. So that would be where people should start on. In the SEAI context, we've lovely information on our website, www. Dot SEAI. Ie to have a look at. But across Europe, most of the energy agency will have some version of the same thing as well. Key one though, figure out where you're at first.
[00:42:33] Speaker A: Very good. Very good indeed. Now you kind of touched on it, but just as we're close to wrapping up, and I'm not using that word on purpose, but what are the motivations for doing a retrofit? When you need to motivate like the people of Ireland, you know, what would you be telling them?
[00:42:52] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know what we do, we do an awful lot of behavioral and attitude surveys and works. Actually our most recent one came out and we looked at the reasons for undertaking taking a retrofit. And the most important top two reasons are reducing energy costs, which is not entirely surprising in an energy crisis, but also home comfort. People realize the comfort and the benefits of a retrofit in their home. So you can use more rooms, you got better comfort in a home. Obviously you'd love it to be climate and things like that. That's not the top reason, but in a weird kind of way, it doesn't really matter once they're undertaking the activity. So it's comfort and cost are two top reasons.
[00:43:29] Speaker A: Okay. I mean, so that's basically. Yeah, that's basically one of the, one of the last questions. So you've kind of, you've kind of come in on that. And what do you feel, I mean, in terms of climate and fuel poverty, do you feel that those were they kind of coming into the list at all, Ciaran or not?
[00:43:51] Speaker B: Not necessarily. Climate does come into the list. Absolutely. But it's a little bit further down the fuel poverty. I mean, number one is to reduce people's energy bills. Okay, so the fuel poverty area, it's a very complex space because this is where people undertake a retrofit themselves and they have the funding and the ability to get the funding to do that. There is a lot of people that for various reasons are in a kind of an energy poverty position that they just don't have the funds to retrofit. So they're stuck. So that's where, and you've heard you might have, we didn't touch it on this discussion, but around this idea of communities we did touch on, but just transition, that everybody has to be able to come along. So at a societal level, we have to put in programs that bring everybody with us. Because if it's a case that we only retrofit all of the inverted commas rich people, well then that's not society, that's just that the people can afford it. So we need the programs in place that can bring everybody along to make sure everybody can benefit from the lower cost of retrofit.
[00:44:47] Speaker A: Okay, I have one final question, and I think we've covered a lot, and if you feel that you left anything out, you can certainly say it to me. One final question that comes to mind is there's some beautiful offices.
My dad used to have one around the Dublin two area, gorgeous buildings. What sort of schemes do we have for those beautiful old office buildings and the likes of those kind of properties that are not homes?
[00:45:14] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great one. Well, I suppose on the not homes one, we would. There's some commercial grant schemes coming out now being developed, and there'll be kind of based loosely on the domestic grand schemes, where it's just a measure by measure approach. But it's an important point, actually, and very important from a european context, is in Ireland, we would call those traditional homes. So anything built before about 1941 as a traditional home, now, those beautiful offices, I think I know where you're talking about, would originally have been homes, but they're offices now.
[00:45:43] Speaker A: But I'm around Fitzwilliam street and, yeah, beauty, really.
[00:45:47] Speaker B: But they're traditional buildings. And the building physics, the kind of buildings that they're made from, is fundamentally different. They're built in a fundamentally different way then than they are now. So the kind of materials that you would use to insulate and improve the energy efficiency of your relatively new build suburban home are fundamentally different for those ones.
We're currently in the process of developing a pilot scheme to figure out how you might start to retrofit those buildings at scale. And the reason is, for example, some of those buildings would be permeable. And so moisture and air, true to a degree, certainly air gets true. If you put an impermeable insulation layer on those, you can moisture, and that's something you don't see today or tomorrow, but it could take many years to manifest. So you have to get different types of materials to retro those types of homes. And then there's a cost factor as well. So that actually leads into a really interesting space for many of those. For many of those types of buildings. The more efficient way of retrofitting, if you want, will be around district heating. So the kind of cost to retrofit some of those georgian, georgian buildings will probably be prohibitive, but the way you'll decarbonize their heating is by using district heating networks, which are quite prevalent in places like Denmark and also places in eastern Europe. So each individual home won't have his own boiler or gas, oil or gas, but they'll connect into a district heating network in not unsimilar way that they connect into a gas network. They connect into a district heating network and the heat will be circulated from a central place that will be renewable. So that's the kind of direction of travel for those types of buildings.
[00:47:17] Speaker A: That's. Yeah, it's fascinating. And obviously, George and Dublin is very important in terms of our tourism industry, which is obviously a whole other topic. But, you know, you don't want to be changing those facades, you know, not at all.
[00:47:31] Speaker B: And it's out of cost benefit and the cost benefit and the technologies. But certainly district heating and George and Dublin district heating is going to be very, very significant in years to come.
[00:47:38] Speaker A: Okay, that's fascinating. So it's been an absolute pleasure. Is there anything else you'd like to add, Carol, at the end?
[00:47:45] Speaker B: No, I think it's great to chat to you, Jackie. I suppose the only thing is, again, I suppose, take the advantage of what we call in the marketing world, the call to action, that if you are listening to this podcast and you haven't started your journey, maybe now is the time to start.
[00:47:59] Speaker A: Absolutely. And let's just repeat out your website, which is www. Dot, full stop, s for sugar, e for elephant, a for apple, I for Italy, ie.
[00:48:13] Speaker B: And there's an awful lot of information and user guides and things like that on that website. So we'd encourage people, if you, if nothing else, visit the website and start your journey.
[00:48:21] Speaker A: Okay. Thank you so much, Kieran. Brilliant.
[00:48:24] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:48:26] Speaker A: Constructive voices, the podcast for the construction people with news, views and expert interviews.
