Written answers
Wednesday, 28 May 2025
Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment
Environmental Schemes
Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein)
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62. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the amount of funding provided for the excellence in efficient design scheme; and the amount drawn down in each of the years 2020 to 2024, and to date in 2025, in tabular form. [28211/25]
Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal East, Fianna Fail)
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The Excellence in Energy Efficient Design (EXEED) programme supports high impact investments, where an energy efficient design (EED) process is followed to design out energy consumption and develop high performance projects. The EXEED programme was relaunched in March 2023 to provide projects with increased support to a maximum of €3 million and an improved application process. It is important to also highlight that EXEED is a multi-annual scheme so money committed in one financial year may not be paid until the following year. The EXEED programme was not open for applications in 2020 so the table below details the amounts drawn down by year from 2021 to date.
| Budget (m) | No. of Grants awarded - EXEED Stage 1 | No. of Grants awarded - EXEED Stage 2 | Total No. of grants awarded | Avg. grant amount - stage 1 | Avg. grant amount - stage 2 | EXEED Drawn down (M) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | €4.7 | 73 | 21 | 94 | €12,797 | €90,514 | €3.39 |
| 2022 | €3.0 | 47 | 9 | 56 | €14,244 | €171,065 | €1.24 |
| 2023 | €3.3 | 52 | 11 | 63 | €12,169 | €280,496 | €2.01 |
| 2024* | €4.6* | 31 | 14 | 45 | €14,522 | €412,296 | €2.14 |
| 2025 (YTD) | €3.0 | 4 | 3 | 7 | €28,040 | €660,559 | €0.98 |
Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein)
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63. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the estimate the cost of doubling funding available for excellence in efficient design scheme. [28212/25]
Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal East, Fianna Fail)
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In Budget 2025, EXEED was assigned €3 million in Exchequer funding. €2.6 million was capital funding and €400,000 was for current expenditure. If the funding for EXEED was to be doubled for both capital and current expenditure, it would amount to €6 million in total.
Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein)
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64. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the amount of funding provided for the support scheme for renewable heat; and the amount drawn down in each of the years 2020 to 2024, and to date in 2025, in tabular form. [28213/25]
Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein)
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65. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the estimated cost of doubling funding available for the support scheme for renewable heat. [28214/25]
Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal East, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 64 and 65 together.
The primary objective of the Support Scheme for Renewable Heat (SSRH) is to contribute to meeting Ireland’s renewable energy targets, while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The scheme was developed to incentivise the delivery of an additional 3% of heat use in Ireland from renewable sources, and offers financial support for the adoption of renewable heating systems by commercial, industrial, agricultural, district heating (heat source only) and other non-domestic heat users. The scheme consists of two types of support mechanism:
- an on-going operational support/tariff (paid for a period up to 15 years) for new installations, or installations that currently use a fossil fuel heating system and convert to using biomass or anaerobic digestion (biogas) heating systems; and
- a grant (of up to 40%) to support investment in renewable heating systems using heat pumps.
| Year | Budget (€m) | Spend (€m) |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 0.9 | 0.1 |
| 2021 | 3.3 | 0.22 |
| 2022 | 2.5 | 0.72 |
| 2023 | 3.5 | 1.16 |
| 2024 | 4.6 | 3.7 |
| 2025 | 6.66 | 1.17 (to date) |
The cost of doubling the funding available for the SSRH, based on the scheme's 2025 budget, would amount to €13.32 million per annum.
Businesses are continuing to avail of the operational support for biomass and biogas heating systems, with the numbers being added to the scheme is increasing every year. Businesses are also availing of the heat pump installation grant with numbers applying and drawing down the grant increasing year-on-year.
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