Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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170. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the supports available via the SEAI to farmers for the purposes of introducing solar power to their farms; the total funding of these schemes and grants; the number of applications for such schemes and grants that have been received from farmers for each of the years 2016 to 202 and to date in 2021; the number of applications that were successful by county in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27235/21]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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The Communities Energy Grant (CEG) Scheme funded by my Department and operated by the SEAI, makes grant funding available for community-based partnerships to improve the energy efficiency of the building stock in their area. The scheme supports cross-sectoral, partnership approaches that deliver energy savings to a range of building types including public, commercial and community buildings with a particular focus on using the projects to deliver home retrofits. A capital budget of €30 million has been provided for this scheme in 2021.

The CEG scheme also supports new approaches to achieving high quality improvements in energy efficiency and installation of renewables within Irish communities. Communities do this by bringing together groups of buildings under the same retrofit programme to facilitate community-wide energy improvements more efficiently and cost effectively than might otherwise be possible.

While farmers can benefit from this scheme, SEAI does not have a specific categorisation for farming. As such, a breakdown of farming participation numbers are not available. However, SEAI has over the last number of years been actively working with Co-ops and creameries to increase awareness of the CEG scheme.

PV installs, although not supported as a sole measure under the scheme, are supported as part of a final energy plan for any business where the installation is for self-consumption purposes. The focus of the CEG scheme is fabric first and SEAI look to ensure that the fabric and other heavy energy consumption activities on a site are addressed prior to the install of any PV measures.

The table below sets out the total amount of grant funding provided to community and other elements (i.e. other than homes) under this scheme for the past two years. This includes support for businesses and farms and covers all project measures including solar. The lower spend in 2020 reflects Covid impact on retrofit work. While projects for 2021 have been approved, grant payments will not be made until later this year.

The Excellence in Energy Efficiency Design (EXEED) grant scheme also supports organisations (business and public sector) to undertake design, construction and commissioning projects using the EXEED certification process. Details of scheme spend per year as well as funding awarded in respect of the agriculture sector is set out in the table below. EXEED capital grant support is only applicable for assets which are working towards EXEED certification for excellence in energy efficient design. The projects set out below included a wide range of measures, not only solar PV.