ENERGY SAVING BLOG

Energy Efficiency Retrofit Fund for public and business sector
Retrofit aims to deliver a major increase through this decade in the scale and depth of energy efficiency investments in upgrading existing buildings and facilities. This will require new delivery models to be developed and implemented, including the associated organisational, contractual and financial mechanisms.
In pursuit of this long term vision, SEAI will support a limited suite (indicatively 50) of early demonstration projects in 2010 through this Energy Efficiency Retrofit Fund (EERF) to:
(a) Achieve significant and verifiable energy savings;
(b) Provide key learning in relation to technical, contractual, procurement, financial and organisational/ logistical elements to effective delivery; and thereby
(c) Inform and encourage the early development and adoption of new delivery models. Such projects will be supported in both the public and private sectors.

Key objectives are to:

•    Achieve significant, measurable and verifiable EE impacts in pursuance of national targets
•    Develop and showcase innovative delivery models: including the associated contractual and procurement mechanisms based on the principles of energy performance contracting, which in turn will inform other longer term initiatives under Retrofit
•    Apply packages of EE measures across a number of buildings and facilities
•    Support the pursuit of deeper, and more technically/ economic challenging, EE measures
•    Build and develop the supply chain capability, particularly relating to procurement and contracting arrangements between supply chain partners
•    Identify, quantify and prove potential energy saving opportunities and delivery models through exemplar case studies, thereby facilitating widespread replication.

Projects of a scale eligible to attract grant support of over €100,000 are particularly encouraged.

In general, grant support per project will not be less than €20,000 and will not exceed €500,000.