Viimase peal ajakiri:ConstructIreland

CONSTRUCTIRELAND for as sustainable future
Editor´s letter

If the rhetoric of creating green collar jobs is to be converted into results on a truly meaningful scale,some innovative thinking is required.Government doesn´t have the money to subsidise the green drive that could play a central role in reviving
Ireland´s economic fortunes.Most Irish people are similarly strapped for cash,and unlikely to invest in reducing their environmental impact unless the benefits of so doing are overhelmingly obvious.

An obvious example of this is the home energy upgrade market.Arguably,it´s in our interest that virtually every building in Ireland is substantially energy upgraded.
It´s telling that SEI´s Home Energy Saving scheme grant is available for all privately owned homes built prior to 2006.As much as this is an indictment of the legacy of poor buildng standards in Ireland,it gives a sense of the scale of opportunity.On this basis,how many homes need upgrading?A million?1.5 million?Should this not be extended to include virtually every office,school,factory and municipal building in Ireland?
Whilst in ideal world,we might be able to write blank cheques to enable this to happen,there is a smart alternative which could stimulate this work in today´s conditions.It´s called Pay As You Save(PAYS),and I write about it in an article on page 14.PAYS would offer any building occupant an energy upgrade without the need to invest upfront capital or sign up to a loan-and it´s reasonable to assume some people may not be keen to sign up to more debt.What PAYS does instead is assign the debt to the building through a utility bill,so that the person who signs up is only repaying for the energy upgrade whilst they occupy the property.When they sell or when their lease ends,the next occupant assumes the repayments.Because these repayments are part of a utility bill,and specifically because the repayment rate is set up to be lower than the estimated savings in reduced energy costs,the occupant sees an immediate cash benefit.
Believe it or not,it´s very much in the energy suppliers´ interest to offer PAYS to their customers.It no longer makes sense for them to base their business models on expanding the amount of gas,oil and electricity that people buy.Ireland´s energy suppliers own relatively little in terms of natural resources,and therefore their revenues are highly sensitive to changes in wholesale energy price and help to decouple their profitability from investment in fuel supply and expensive generation and transmission systems.It would enable the utilities to target the circa 580,000 homes currently reliant on home heating oil.Perhaps most interestingly from utilities´ perspective,it would offer them the security of having contracts over repayment periods of up to twenty years with an individual property-a very attractive prospect in an increasingly competitive market.
The responses from the recent Amàrach Research online omnibus provide compelling evidence of the need for PAYS,as the news story on page four shows.58 per cent of homeowners said they didn´t have enough money saved to upgrade their home,whilst 80 per cent said they would be interested in paying for an energy upgradeˇtheir utility bills.
Regards,
the editor
Jeff Colley
Email:jeff@constructireland.ie