The Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources have announced a new Home Energy Saving Scheme aimed at encouraging homeowners to improve the energy efficiency of their homes. The scheme will target older housing as these homes are most in need of energy efficiency retrofitting.

Initially, there will be a regional pilot of the scheme in North Tipperary, Limerick, Clare and Dundalk. There will be an additional strand, which will allow for clusters of housing throughout the country. The full scale national programme will be rolled out in 2009.

The scheme will be administered by Sustainable Energy Ireland (SEI) and locally by the Tipperary Energy Agency, the Limerick/Clare Energy Agency and the SEI team in Dundalk.

A BER assessor will survey the home for a fee of 100 euro . The BER Assessor will be paid the rest of the full fee of 350 Euro by the Department.
The Government will then cover up to 30% of the cost of any work recommended by the assessor to make the house more energy efficient these works, to a maximum of €2,500. On completion of the works a follow-up energy assessment on the building will be undertaken so that there is a “before and after” test of what has been done.

BER – Building Energy Ratings are going to be big business in the coming months. The SEI is registering more assessors every month and getting a good fee from them. Trainers are making money from providing the courses for the BER assessors. The general public will be footing the bill for getting the Energy Rating Certificates for therir homes in 2009 when they want to sell them. One worrying thing is that there is nothing in place to audit or check up on the assesors. Many BER certs have been produced for new properties – but still the SEI has a blank page on it’s website headed “SEI Quality Assurance”. What is to stop a BER assessor from giving houses good ratings when they don’t qualify for them? Who  will check up on them? There is mention of a 5000 max Euro fine for giving wrong ratings out – but no mention of who or how the assessors will be audited or checked. The scheme is open to abuse  – but the SEI is getting 25 euro for each rating and should be expected to have a system in place to ensure accuracy and honesty.