Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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My Department has a strong record with respect to sustainable energy in school buildings and this performance has been recognised at both national and international level with sustainable energy awards for excellence in design and specification.

My Department’s approach to the decarbonisation of the school sector is predicated on establishing a credible phased pathway to zero emissions, and meeting 2030 public sector targets through an evidence based approach, informed by the Department’s Energy Research Programme which has been in place from 1997 with over 54 different research strands.

Since 2009, schools designed and built in accordance with the Department’s schools technical guidance documents have achieved A3 Building Energy Ratings. Current schools typically achieve up to 20% higher energy performance and 25% better carbon performance than required by Building Regulations.

My Department and the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications have developed a jointly funded school sector decarbonisation pathfinder programme. This pathfinder is a great example of collaboration ensuring the deployment of new design approaches and technologies are introduced to the school sector on an evidence based approach. This programme continues to assist my Department to explore options and test various solutions for decarbonised energy efficiency solutions in our broad range of school building types.

The SEAI annual report 2022 on public sector energy performance (latest one published) provides access to sectoral details on energy consumption. This indicates that the majority of schools reporting have their heating requirements supplied using either gas or oil. Also noted is that by 2021, standalone schools had saved 22%, or 147 GWh, since their baselines. The gap to the 2030 energy efficiency target is 185 GWh. The savings made are equivalent to €29M.

As part of commitments under the Government’s Climate Action Plan, my Department published in July 2023, its decarbonisation pathway roadmap, which includes the strategic vision and outlines the high level initial trajectory to meet 2030 and 2050 energy efficiency and carbon targets for the schools sector.

This roadmap highlights the need for a flexible and tailored approach to the decarbonisation of the school sector to enable the school sector to meet the required targets.The principle challenge lies in the area of decarbonisation of heating with renewable heating systems and to improve the energy performance of schools that were built at a time when fuel was plentiful, relatively cheap and technology and material choices were not as advanced as today.

Renewable heating such as heat pumps have been trialled in schools since 2002. They are not a direct swop-in technology to replace oil boilers (significantly different operating system temperatures) and for 100% replacement require very significant associated fabric upgrades, new and retrofitted mechanical plant and services along with capacity increases and upgrades to electrical network supplies to schools.

Delivery of a national deep retrofit programme for up to 4000 schools cannot happen overnight and there will need to be flexibility in approach to ensure continued delivery of the educational system and compatibility with market capacity and resources. This flexibility will involve in some cases full deep retrofit and in others a phased approach developing a decarbonisation glide path towards zero carbon. This decarbonisation glide path approach towards zero carbon will initially focus on a national biomass programme and a national heat pump delivery programme.

Indicative trajectory which will be further refined is targeting 51 % of thermal heating output in the school sector to be transitioned by 2030 to renewal heating thus reducing significantly fossil fuel use and carbon emissions.