Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party)
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404. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment if his Department has achieved an annual rate of energy efficient renovation for Government buildings of 3% as required by EU Directive 2012/27/EU on energy efficiency; his plans to extend this to schools, libraries and community facilities, municipal or other public buildings; if the national energy efficiency targets have been set for local or central Government; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38441/18]

Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party)
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405. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment if the cost of achieving an annual rate of energy efficient renovation for Government buildings of 6%, as guided by the principles of EU Directive 2012/27/EU on energy efficiency, has been identified; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38442/18]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 404 and 405 together.

The EU Energy Efficiency Directive sets out measures Member States must take for the EU to meet its target of improving energy efficiency by 20% by 2020. Article 5 of the Directive provides for the exemplary role of public bodies buildings and includes achieving an annual rate of energy efficient renovation for Government buildings of 3%. The directive allows for this to be achieved either through renovation or by “alternative measures”. Ireland has chosen the alternative approach which entails a mix of energy management and efficiency upgrade measures.

Ireland has however set a more ambitious energy efficiency objective for our public sector. When Government set our national 20% target the public sector (which includes schools and local authorities) was given a more ambitious target of 33% which goes beyond the 3% renovation requirement in the EU directive. Progress has been good with a 20% improvement in energy efficiency achieved across the public sector by end 2016. The cumulative savings from 2009 to 2016 amount to 2.6 million tonnes of CO2 emissions reduction and €737m in energy spend avoided.

In the case of my own Department we achieved approximately 20% energy efficiency improvement by end 2016 with a 31% efficiency improvement over the same period for our group. I am confident this performance will be further enhanced when the next performance report issues late this year. Details of efficiencies achieved by all public bodies are available online in the Annual Report on Public Sector Energy Efficiency Performance available on the SEAI website.

To further drive the effort required to achieve the 33% target, I published the first Government approved Public Sector Energy Efficiency Strategy in 2017. The Strategy introduces new governance structures and enhanced support measures, and provided clarity on the retention of financial savings achieved by public sector bodies from the energy efficiency measures they implement.

Since we launched the Strategy all government departments have appointed a designated Energy Performance Officer (EPO) to drive the Strategy and provide the necessary strategic leadership to the bodies within their groups. My Department, along with the SEAI, and the OPW have been engaging pro-actively with Departments and their EPO’s through workshops and individual advisory sessions. The main focus is to support EPO's to work with the bodies in their sector to identify and develop energy efficiency projects and avail of the advice and supports available.

Since 2017, I have provided €14m in funding to the SEAI to engage and work with the OPW and the Department of Education & Skills on two pilot projects. These are delivering energy retrofit upgrades, and crucially, informing and developing replicable and scalable models for energy retrofit investment that can be more widely deployed. In parallel the SEAI is working with the higher education and healthcare sectors to develop significant projects and continues, along with my Department, to support the City & County Management Association in developing the National Public Lighting Upgrade Programme, which has the potential to more than halve local authority electricity use.