Kilcullen energy meeting told 'don't be at mercy of someone selling something'

KCA's Noel Clare, centre, with Elizabeth Kearney and Eugene Conlon of Energy Team.

A good turnout this afternoon to the Energy Upgrade workshop in Kilcullen heard details of a pathway to lower energy consumption for communities and individual homes, writes Brian Byrne.

The event in the Library was presented by the Dunleer-based Energy Team, formed from the Dunleer Sustainable Energy Community Network established in 2016 in association with the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland. Energy Team was formed to manage the energy programmes within the network, which to date have retrofitted 310 premises, saved more than 2,000 tonnes of C02 from entering the environment, and reduced electricity consumption by more than 11 million kWh.

At today's workshop, the team's manager Eugene Conlon said the main aim of the event was to give a picture of the supports that are available for measures to improve the energy efficiencies of homes and other premises.

Along with Energy Team's Communities Retrofit Programme lead Elizabeth Kearney, they referenced individual homes, and community and public buildings with which Energy Team has worked, not just in County Louth but also in Fingal, Wicklow, Westmeath and Roscommon. Their current partnership with Kildare County Council is to help the four SECs here — Kilcullen, Monasterevin, Clane and Maynooth.

"The important thing is to know what you should be doing rather than be at the mercy of someone selling you something," Elizabeth Kearney noted, emphasising that the first recommendation is to have a technical assessment of the home or other premises being upgraded. Such an assessment will provide a list of things that need to be done to bring the premises to a required B2 standard.

Energy Team offers a 'one stop shop' service through which the assessment can be done, followed by management of whatever work is decided on by the owner, and organising the relevant grant aid for the project.

The group works with Cork-based SE Systems who carry out all project management in partnership with specialised heating, glazing and insulation companies.

Elizabeth Kearney described the Energy Team's role as three-fold — to educate communities on energy saving, help get retrofitting done, and eventually to have communities generate their own power.

About 25 people attended the Kilcullen meeting, which was one of three in Kildare today being conducted by Energy Team. Following their presentation, the organisers fielded questions on grants, their own charges, and retrofit costs and payback times. Those last would be quite variable, the meeting heard, as every home is different and the level of retrofitting in each project would also vary.

Representatives of KCA also attended — Noel Clare of Kilcullen Community Action said that the town's SEC committee had first met with Energy Team about six months ago, when the Kilcullen SEC was 'struggling' with developing its own programme.

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