Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats)
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225. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the status of the development of an approach to cost-effectively retrofit public sector building stock by 2030 as set out in the Climate Action Plan; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4316/22]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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The Programme for Government and the Climate Action Plan set specific targets and commitments for the public sector to achieve – namely 50% energy efficiency improvement (increased from 33% by 2020) and 51% emissions reduction target by 2030, and the development of an approach to cost effectively retrofit the public sector building stock. Work is currently underway to identify and evaluate potential options for the cost effective retrofit of public buildings, with a key focus being placed on developing an approach that will result in delivering deep retrofit with renewable heat solutions, thus supporting the decarbonisation of the building stock. In addition, the use of non-exchequer funding options, including EU funding and privately funded energy performance contracts, is being explored.

The Public Sector Retrofit Pathfinder Programme, which is co-funded by my Department and a number of key sectors, is currently testing building retrofit approaches with the objective of developing a scalable model that can be replicated across the wider public sector. The learnings and outcomes from this programme are helping to inform the development of the overall approach to cost effectively retrofit public sector building stock. At end 2021, over 340 retrofit projects were supported with funding of over €50 million from my Department.

The latest published Report on Public Sector Energy Efficiency shows that, at end 2019, the sector had achieved 29% improvement in energy efficiency since 2009. The 2020 report will be published shortly.