SAEI Grants have run out...Government don't seem to care...

raspberrypi67

Well here we go again, another reason why I'm so cynical on the governments approach towards renewable energies and grants.
SAEI grant money has apparently now run dry and guess what...the Government has no plan to continue....
What the hell is Richard Bruton ,or whoever is responsible for this area, actually doing....??
They certainly do seem to be leaving it up to the public to foot the bill for all these hair brained ideas about CO2 emissions.....
They are completely and utterly a shower of useless contemptuous idiots that only care about their expenses and pensions at the end of the day.

Alkers

raspberrypi67 wrote: »

Well here we go again, another reason why I'm so cynical on the governments approach towards renewable energies and grants.
SAEI grant money has apparently now run dry and guess what...the Government has no plan to continue....
What the hell is Richard Bruton ,or whoever is responsible for this area, actually doing....??
They certainly do seem to be leaving it up to the public to foot the bill for all these hair brained ideas about CO2 emissions.....
They are completely and utterly a shower of useless contemptuous idiots that only care about their expenses and pensions at the end of the day.

This is only for one particular scheme is it not? And a pilot project at that.

Macha

It's an extremely important scheme if we're to hit our climate targets.

I've heard rumours they ran out of money back in April but were told to keep accept applications because of the local and European elections and the draft climate plan.

Seriously damaging to the credibility of SEAI (which OK, already has issues) and shows the weakness of Bruton's position in government that he can't secure funding for this or simple incompetence by him and the department.

Dudda

Similar discussion in the Construction Forum near the end of this thread
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057887947

unkel

It was a terrible grant. How can it be equitable to give a handful of home owners up to €50k subsidy? That's not sustainable. Financially. You can't give a million houses this sort of subsidy. It would cost fifty billion euro :rolleyes:

The 120 families nationwide that got it must be very happy with this generous gift they got from the tax payer though

Now go spend 5 billion on a massive wind park off shore in the Atlantic that generates more electricity than this country uses...

Macha

We seem to find plenty of money to give to the greyhound industry, farmers (on top of CAP) and other ridiculous recipients.

Retrofitting homes is essential if we're to hit our climate targets. The cost of climate breakdown will far eclipse any investment costs to abate it.

unkel

Macha wrote: »

Retrofitting homes is essential if we're to hit our climate targets. The cost of climate breakdown will far eclipse any investment costs to abate it.

Not any.

We have limited resources, it is better to use them for the most efficient ways to tackle climate change. I don't see how spending billions essentially on labour to retrofit older houses is efficient

The focus should not be on how much energy we use, but on what the source of energy that is. If we can produce so much wind (and trade our surplus with other countries that produce too much sun or nuclear) that we are energy neutral (and zero emissions), it doesn't really matter if we have old leaky houses that use four times the energy that they would do after a retrofit

I agree with you though that we need to spend a lot of money to try stop escalating climate change. Urgently. Thankfully I get the feeling that this is finally starting to dawn on a lot of people in recent months.

Macha

Every single credible decarbonisation strategy has energy efficiency as its #1 measure both in terms of how to reduce emissions and value for money.

Efficiency absolutely has to be the first consideration. Yes we have to decarbonise our energy supply but that job will be a hell of a lot harder and more expensive the more energy we use.

We've built loads of crappy uninsulated homes heated using fossil fuels. Those are exactly the buildings we now have to do retrofit as fast as possible.

screamer

Isn’t that the same grant that was part of one of Dermott Bannons renovations last year... they got 40k back on it. Madness that level of grant cannot be sustained, far too much.

unkel

Macha wrote: »

Efficiency absolutely has to be the first consideration.

Low hanging fruit, sure. But not efficiency at all costs. If it costs €100,000 on a deep fit to reduce the energy consumption of one house by 5MWh per year and it costs €50,000 to increase wind production by 5MWh per year, we should forget about the deep fit and concentrate on wind. Agreed?

screamer

unkel wrote: »

Low hanging fruit, sure. But not efficiency at all costs. If it costs €100,000 on a deep fit to reduce the energy consumption of one house by 5MWh per year and it costs €50,000 to increase wind production by 5MWh per year, we should forget about the deep fit and concentrate on wind. Agreed?

Indeed deep retrofit is only farting against the wind......

Charlie-Bravo

screamer wrote: »

Indeed deep retrofit is only farting against the wind......

In a nutshell, this expression sums up the whole scheme with a pun too. Bravo.

These grants were all a cod. Contractors were just adding on the grant money to their prices. I got three companies to look at properly insulating my mother's ceiling.

First guy is X amount. Says that's the price doesn't do grants. The next two guys say they will do all the grant paperwork etc and get the grant but lo and behold my mother would still end up paying the same amount to them after the grant as the first guy for the same amount of insulation in the attic

uck51js9zml2yt

Heard the seai guy this morning on radio. Wouldn't answer the question as to why they took applications when they knew the money had dried up.

Filibustering in the extreme.

rolion

Deleted User wrote: »

These grants were all a cod. Contractors were just adding on the grant money to their prices. I got three companies to look at properly insulating my mother's ceiling.

First guy is X amount. Says that's the price doesn't do grants. The next two guys say they will do all the grant paperwork etc and get the grant but lo and behold my mother would still end up paying the same amount to them after the grant as the first guy for the same amount of insulation in the attic

Been asked to shell €1,700 inc to install in a single day 7 PV panels,with all my parts.

Now,they could go and scratch their ass_heads and do some foot work to get business in to pay their fcuking wages and rents,leave aside the gross profits and bonuses / commisions.
Just out of common sense... greed,greed,greed... fcuk the customer now and today while we can, tomorrow,who knows... grant will be there for us only to cash it in.

gmisk

I agree they shouldn't have been taken more applications if they were going to shut it down.
But why were some people going ahead with the work before there applications were approved? It's really on them to be honest.
e.g. below
https://twitter.com/ConnorPM/status/1161298309908180993

Its also SEAI not SAEI.

Dardania

I could not agree more with unkel.

Spending money on going into people's house and doing deep, invasive works is labour intensive and tricky.

Spending the same money on a ginormous amount of sustainable energy, and fitting panel heaters & storage heaters is a far simpler way to achieve the goal of being carbon neutral. And less manpower resource intensive.

is_that_so

It was a pilot scheme and demand seemed to have exceeded the funding. Pilots tend to be quite short-lived but ultimately lead to some form of actual schemes. It is also a grant, not something you are automatically entitled to.

salmocab

gmisk wrote: »

I agree they shouldn't have been taken more applications if they were going to shut it down.
But why were some people going ahead with the work before they were given the funding? It's really on them to be honest.

Lad I work with was caught on this, he was effectively told by the people setting it up (an outside agency that the seai used as far as I can see) that it wouldn’t be a problem it’s sll sorted. The work has to be finished by a certain date end of October I think so he needed to get started. It seems the whole thing was a cluster f*** he was doing work anyway and decided to do extra for the grant and will now have to pay the extra himself.

gmisk

is_that_so wrote: »

It was a pilot scheme and demand seemed to have exceeded the funding. Pilots tend to be quite short-lived but ultimately lead to some form of actual schemes. It is also a grant, not something you are automatically entitled to.

Exactly, if your application hasnt been approved dont do the work, then cry about it when its not approved!

gmisk

salmocab wrote: »

Lad I work with was caught on this, he was effectively told by the people setting it up (an outside agency that the seai used as far as I can see) that it wouldn’t be a problem it’s sll sorted. The work has to be finished by a certain date end of October I think so he needed to get started. It seems the whole thing was a cluster f*** he was doing work anyway and decided to do extra for the grant and will now have to pay the extra himself.

Well then its a case of lesson learned hopefully.
This scheme was also a pilot so could really be wound up at any time.

The only money back I got when doing up my house was under that home renovation incentive scheme, I made sure each person doing the work was part of it and had it done well before the scheme was due to come to a close.

Dudda

is_that_so wrote: »

It was a pilot scheme and demand seemed to have exceeded the funding. Pilots tend to be quite short-lived but ultimately lead to some form of actual schemes. It is also a grant, not something you are automatically entitled to.

Have to agree and highlight this. It was a pilot. Lots of other individual grants like heating control upgrades, attic insulation, solar panels and batteries, external insulation, cavity pumping, internal insulation, BER grant, heat pump grant, etc are all preforming well or at least appear to be. The only system of combining the other grants is you get 100 extra if you do more than three which isn't a massive incentive. This overall deep retrofit grant was a trial run as an alternative.

I looked into the deep retrofit but it didn't suit me and I've saved a lot of money instead using the external insulation grant and intend in the future to use the heat pump grant.

You have to follow the rules if you want the money. You can't forge ahead until you're approved with any of the grants.

gmisk

Dudda wrote: »

Have to agree and highlight this. It was a pilot. Lots of other individual grants like heating control upgrades, attic insulation, solar panels and batteries, external insulation, cavity pumping, internal insulation, BER grant, heat pump grant, etc are all preforming well or at least appear to be. The only system of combining the other grants is you get 100 extra if you do more than three which isn't a massive incentive. This overall deep retrofit grant was a trial run as an alternative.

I looked into the deep retrofit but it didn't suit me and I've saved a lot of money instead using the external insulation grant and intend in the future to use the heat pump grant.

You have to follow the rules if you want the money. You can't forge ahead until you're approved with any of the grants.

That explains why every house in my road is pretty much having that done!
I might be tempted myself!
Did you go with contractor or apply yourself?

The grant looks good - can I ask roughly how much you had to pay on top?
Apartment (any) OR Mid-terrace House €2,750
Semi-detached OR End of terrace €4,500
Detached house €6,000

salmocab

gmisk wrote: »

Well then its a case of lesson learned hopefully.
This scheme was also a pilot so could really be wound up at any time.

The only money back I got when doing up my house was under that home renovation incentive scheme, I made sure each person doing the work was part of it and had it done well before the scheme was due to come to a close.

Yeah he was nervous from the start but was also nervous of the deadline. He was going through the agent who assured him it wasn’t a problem but as time went on and nothing was coming back he contacted the seai a few weeks back and they actually told him that the deadline would be extended anyway which sounds now like it was a fib. Obviously I don’t have all the details just what he was saying during tea breaks etc but it sounded real shoddy to me from the start. Applications had to go in in batches of 7 and if one pulled out everyone would be affected.

gmisk

salmocab wrote: »

Yeah he was nervous from the start but was also nervous of the deadline. He was going through the agent who assured him it wasn’t a problem but as time went on and nothing was coming back he contacted the seai a few weeks back and they actually told him that the deadline would be extended anyway which sounds now like it was a fib. Obviously I don’t have all the details just what he was saying during tea breaks etc but it sounded real shoddy to me from the start. Applications had to go in in batches of 7 and if one pulled out everyone would be affected.

It sounds like a disaster no doubt, the 7 at a time thing sounds utterly bizarre!

salmocab

gmisk wrote: »

It sounds like a disaster no doubt, the 7 at a time thing sounds utterly bizarre!

Again not positive but I think the 7 brought it up to a certain amount of money that the seai would deal with. So for example 7 looking for 35,000 to 40,000 brings it to somewhere in the region of 250,000 which is where they wanted to deal with. Honestly though I’m not sure as he wasn’t too clear but that’s what I took from it.

Dudda

gmisk wrote: »

That explains why every house in my road is pretty much having that done!
I might be tempted myself!
Did you go with contractor or apply yourself?

https://www.seai.ie/grants/home-energy-grants/insulation-grants/

For any grant you have to get it done by a contractor who's on an approved list.
What I find is as you can only chose from certain contractors they increase their quote.

I'd expect the people who were getting the deep retrofit grant and were quoted say €100,000 from someone on the list would probably have got a quote for €70-80k from another builder not going the grant process. With me able to do a lot of work myself I could add further savings bringing it back to close to the final cost after the grant. This is why I didn't go the deep retrofit route and instead chose individual grants where I had more control of the overall project.
I don't think it's a bad thing this trial has ended as serious premiums are added by the approved contractors. It was a trial grant which lessons can be learnt from which was exactly what was intended from a trial grant.

salmocab

Dudda wrote: »

https://www.seai.ie/grants/home-energy-grants/insulation-grants/

For any grant you have to get it done by a contractor who's on an approved list.
What I find is as you can only chose from certain contractors they increase their quote.

I'd expect the people who were getting the deep retrofit grant and were quoted say €100,000 from someone on the list would probably have got a quote for €70-80k from another builder not going the grant process. With me able to do a lot of work myself I could add further savings bringing it back to close to the final cost after the grant. This is why I didn't go the deep retrofit route and instead chose individual grants where I had more control of the overall project.
I don't think it's a bad thing this trial has ended as serious premiums are added by the approved contractors. It was a trial grant which lessons can be learnt from which was exactly what was intended from a trial grant.

Don’t think the deep retrofit grant needed to be by an approved contractor, I think there were just certain things that needed to be fulfilled and obviously could be proven after. Air tightness etc

Dudda

salmocab wrote: »

Don’t think the deep retrofit grant needed to be by an approved contractor, I think there were just certain things that needed to be fulfilled and obviously could be proven after. Air tightness etc

True, not an approved contractor for the Deep Retrofit but they do have a list of contractors on their website. It has also grown a lot since I looked into it which could have increased competition and now be giving better value.

All other grants (or the ones I've used or looked at) have a list of approved contractors.

gmisk

Dudda wrote: »

https://www.seai.ie/grants/home-energy-grants/insulation-grants/

For any grant you have to get it done by a contractor who's on an approved list.
What I find is as you can only chose from certain contractors they increase their quote.

I'd expect the people who were getting the deep retrofit grant and were quoted say €100,000 from someone on the list would probably have got a quote for €70-80k from another builder not going the grant process. With me able to do a lot of work myself I could add further savings bringing it back to close to the final cost after the grant. This is why I didn't go the deep retrofit route and instead chose individual grants where I had more control of the overall project.
I don't think it's a bad thing this trial has ended as serious premiums are added by the approved contractors. It was a trial grant which lessons can be learnt from which was exactly what was intended from a trial grant.

Thanks for that will give a shout to the companies on below list and see what they say
https://www.seai.ie/grants/home-energy-grants/how-to-apply/energy-partners/

Wartburg

As coming from the link to the SEAI Energy partners:
"Contact one of our registered Energy Partners list below, who will be able to advise you on the measures best suited to your home"

Is it good or bad when you have to apply for a government funded scheme through private businesses like Kingspan? Who monitors their objectivity "to advise you on the best suited measures to your home"? Usually it´s not in the nature of a global manufacturer in the construction business, to offer someone better solutions than they have in their own range....

Coltrane

unkel wrote: »

Not any.

The focus should not be on how much energy we use, but on what the source of energy that is. If we can produce so much wind (and trade our surplus with other countries that produce too much sun or nuclear) that we are energy neutral (and zero emissions), it doesn't really matter if we have old leaky houses that use four times the energy that they would do after a retrofit

Unkel, this isn't the generally perceived wisdom as I understand it. State of the art seems to be that the most effective 'green' investment is insulation rather than increased production.



But: Cost of labour/the construction industry really is a big issue at the moment. It probably distorts the normal efficiency-rankings so as to make retrofit relatively less efficient in Dublin especially.



I wonder whether the same factors affect offshore wind-farm construction!

unkel

Coltrane wrote: »

Unkel, this isn't the generally perceived wisdom as I understand it. State of the art seems to be that the most effective 'green' investment is insulation rather than increased production.

That's just a mantra. Insulating your attic costs a few hundred and will pay for itself within a few years. A 100k retrofit will never pay for itself.

I prefer logic. What is the most cost effective way to reduce our emissions / de-carbonise? That's the way we should go.

I suspect the most cost effective way to be a very large off shore wind farm, interconnected to other countries, even far away. Probably followed by both commercial solar and a strong nudge to micro solar (farms / industrial buildings / houses)

But obviously we need to have this researched and assessed.

Mad Benny

unkel wrote: »

That's just a mantra. Insulating your attic costs a few hundred and will pay for itself within a few years. A 100k retrofit will never pay for itself. .

The average grant in 2018 was under 35k. The total cost is closer to 70k. Much of the cost is returned to the exchequer in income tax, VAT and a reduction on purchasing carbon credits over the lifetime of a building.

The deep retrofit included upgrading windows, doors, insulation and minimising draught on homes that have very poor energy ratings. It's a fair point that you can avail of grants for solar but that's not going to keep your home warm.

What you've been saying on this thread is insulate your attic and invest in offshore wind and solar. Let's keep generating heat that goes out the windows, doors, roof and out through the walls.

The options are not mutually exclusive. The government can support offshore wind and help home owners reduce the energy waste heating homes.

unkel

Mad Benny wrote: »

The options are not mutually exclusive. The government can support offshore wind and help home owners reduce the energy waste heating homes.

Indeed, but first we need to find out which is most efficient against climate change and the majority of the money we will have to make available should go there.

garo

Bang for buck varies across different measures. Even the BER report ranks cost and effectiveness of different measures. At the very least, every attic should be insulated and every hot water cylinder too. Take the most efficient steps for everyone before doing fancy things for a few.

Macha

unkel wrote: »

Indeed, but first we need to find out which is most efficient against climate change and the majority of the money we will have to make available should go there.

I don't think you're understanding the scale if the challenge. We have to be net zero, probably even before 2050. Global emissions have to halve by 2030, which means ours have to come down faster.

The risks of climate damage so far outweigh mitigation costs, this can ONLY be seen as an investment challenge. There is plenty of private money out there in pension funds etc. Plenty. The IIGCC represents European institutional investors and they have €23 TRILLION in assets and are begging governments to put in place the policies that allow them to shift capital to climate solutions.

The government have done a pretty great job destroying the credibility of our deep retrofit scheme over the past week.

Dardania

Macha wrote: »

I don't think you're understanding the scale if the challenge. We have to be net zero, probably even before 2050. Global emissions have to halve by 2030, which means ours have to come down faster.

The risks of climate damage so far outweigh mitigation costs, this can ONLY be seen as an investment challenge. There is plenty of private money out there in pension funds etc. Plenty. The IIGCC represents European institutional investors and they have €23 TRILLION in assets and are begging governments to put in place the policies that allow them to shift capital to climate solutions.

The government have done a pretty great job destroying the credibility of our deep retrofit scheme over the past week.

On the investment front - if I was a large pension fund, I'd much rather invest in a fund like this:
http://www.valu-trac.com/administration-services/clients/gravis/clean-energy/
Than extend some bond to (a group of) private homeowners to loan to them to upgrade their houses. Easier to control...

listermint

The prices in this country are off the wall. Got some quotes to do external insulation on mine 200 mm all coming in at the price of a new golf. It's not a two up two down it's a rural bungalow so larger than your average but Christ madness.

Ended up doing it all myself and got a professional plasterer to render it. 12k for everything.

Not for everyone yes it was hard work. Mostly solo with assistance from the father. But it's done to a high standard and I know exactly what was done where and when.

Even dug below ground level and up beyond the eaves to top of block to complete the envelope. Most companies were not offering that.

unkel

Macha wrote: »

I don't think you're understanding the scale if the challenge. We have to be net zero, probably even before 2050. Global emissions have to halve by 2030, which means ours have to come down faster.

Oh I do. All I'm saying is that it's a terrible idea to spend 100k per house on a million houses to retrofit them. That would cost 100 billion. Be it paid from tax money or from private money matters not. And then we will still use most of the fossil fuel that we use today (but a lot less on heating houses)

For far less money we could produce more electricity than the whole country needs from large off shore wind farms

A single 10MW off shore wind turbine costs about 20 million installed and connected. It serves 6000 households. Ireland has about 1.2 million households, so we would need 200 of these turbines, which would only cost about 4 billion. So lets say we will want to generate 250% of our household electricity needs to start with installed within the next 10 years, so we allow for more use of eletricity as we start to de-carbonise and it will give us plenty of interconnector trade for solar / nuclear / hydro. 250% of our needs costs just 10 billion


Of course it's not only about households, as we need electricity for industry, public buildings etc as well, but above is just to compare the results of spending money on retrofitting or installing wind farms

salmocab

I think unkel makes a good point. Really the big picture should be addressed to make real savings for the environment. We’re probably caught up in making targets where we would be better looking at the bigger problem.

unkel

Another way to present the figures for wind. Very large off shore wind turbines have a capacity factor of about 50% (they produce about half of their rating on average over their life span). That means a single 10MW turbine produces 5MW * 24 * 365 = 44GWh per year

Irelands total electricity use at the moment is 26TWh

In order words the above 500 wind turbines costing about 10 billion that I mention in my previous post generate 500 * 44GWh = 22TWh, would almost cover Irelands total electricity use.

Ireland also uses 5 billion m3 of natural gas. One m3 is about 9kWh of energy, so there's an additional 45TWh needed to cover

Another 1000 wind turbines

And Ireland of course uses oil for heating too and petrol and diesel. And then there is aviation...

So yes we are talking several thousand wind generators before Ireland is 100% renewable energy (not electricity). So this will cost in the order of 50-100 billion in total. A lot of money, but for sure doable over the next few decades. Apple's 13 billion will help.

Dardania

+ the cost fo fitting electric heating to every building

garo

Unkel aren't you double counting here? How much of that natural gas is for electricity generation? I would say a bit more than half. 51% of electricity generation and 55% efficiency.

Dr4gul4

listermint wrote: »

The prices in this country are off the wall. Got some quotes to do external insulation on mine 200 mm all coming in at the price of a new golf. It's not a two up two down it's a rural bungalow so larger than your average but Christ madness.

Ended up doing it all myself and got a professional plasterer to render it. 12k for everything.

Not for everyone yes it was hard work. Mostly solo with assistance from the father. But it's done to a high standard and I know exactly what was done where and when.

Even dug below ground level and up beyond the eaves to top of block to complete the envelope. Most companies were not offering that.

Figured i'll upend doing the same my self TBH 320 sq meters over two floors


. Did you find it easy to obtain materials ?

unkel

garo wrote: »

Unkel aren't you double counting here? How much of that natural gas is for electricity generation?

Yes indeed I am. And also I did not take into account current renewable electricity which stands at just under 30% already. And I did not even begin to calculate how much it would cost to electrify all current use of oil, petrol, diesel and aviation fuel. My sums were more for:

1. showing that it is far more efficient to spend money on investing in new off shore wind turbines than in deep retrofitting older houses

2. getting some sort of handle on the total cost of installing wind turbines to cover all our energy needs. Show that this is going to be very expensive, but doable over a decade or two

garo

Agree and agree. But we also need to convert all those boiler users over to heat pumps. And massively incentivise EVs. Starting with public transport.

unkel

EVs will sort themselves out very quickly. They will be cheaper to own than ICE cars even without grants in a few years time and it will only be possibly for car makers to sell full EVs from 2030. Agreed with public transport though.

Not sure if it should be priority to convert boilers to heatpumps. You can't just do that if the house is not well insulated as the heatpump won't be powerful enough. Let's concentrate on building the wind turbines and then keep steadily increasing duty on carbon fuels, so it will make more economic sense to heat your house electrically. Even if that meant using a few €10 2kW fan heaters

garo

Yes. Was reading a Bloomberg report that said that EVs will be cheaper than ICE starting in 2022 but depending on country and type of vehicle. By 2030 all EVs should be cheaper than ICE.
I am less sanguine about using space heaters vs. gas heating at least until Ireland's renewable energy proportion is much higher. Right now natural gas is still over 50% energy input into electricity generation and is only about 55% efficient. So my 84% efficiency gas boiler is better at heating my house and water. Of course this will change in another few years if we put up all those wind farms you are asking for when we can re-evaluate. But right now it is almost three times more expensive to heat my hot water using electricity and I end up emitting almost the same amount of CO2.

gmisk

I contacted one of the suppliers on the SEAI site about zoned heating - heating control, it seems to be a subscription service....are they all like that?

loyatemu

I heat my house with gas, the vast majority of houses availing of the scheme are gas and oil fired CH. Increasing wind production is not going to do anything to reduce the emissions from these buildings.

I contacted one of the suppliers on the SEAI site about zoned heating - heating control, it seems to be a subscription service....are they all like that?

no - there are plenty of smart heating systems that don't need a sub.