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ENACT

ENACT: Enabling National Action of Commercial Take-up of Retrofit

Funded by:

Sustainable Energy Authority Of Ireland (SEAI)

Partners:

Irish Green Building Council, University of Galway, Dublin Chamber of Commerce, Sustainability Works, Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland

Description:

Ireland’s National Climate Action Plan aims to reduce CO2 equivalent emissions from the built environment by 40%-45% relative to 2030 projections. Towards this goal, the Long Term Renovation Strategy (LTRS) targets that one-third of commercial buildings should be renovated to a Building Energy Rating (BER) of at least B by 2030, and all commercial buildings should be renovated to this standard by 2050. There are approximately 109,000 commercial properties in Ireland, most of them either owned or leased by SMEs. Many of these properties will need to undergo energy retrofits to meet the targets set by LTRS.

Building on a broad range of research and expertise, the ENACT (Enabling National Action of Commercial Take-up of Retrofit) project aims develop a comprehensive package of concerted and targeted actions to tackle the barriers to energy renovation in commercial buildings.  

The aims of the ENACT project will be achieved through studies to gain insights into the attitudes, behaviours, and decision-making mental models around commercial retrofits which will help identify market, financial and technical contexts, and barriers. The NUIG component of the project includes:

Research state of the art in behavioural analysis – literature review on decision-making triggers, behaviours, and attitudes towards commercial retrofits to identify the key themes and pathways of investigation for stakeholder engagement.

Developing recommendations for Ireland using findings from literature review and outputs from a nationwide stake-holder engagement process including focus groups, online surveys and workshops.  

Design of a communication toolkit to encourage SMEs to renovate. This will include a review of national and international messages around energy efficiency for SMEs to develop a communication toolkit. 

Objectives:

Accelerating energy efficiency retrofits among SMEs through the development of decision-support tools, communication toolkits, training and guidance documents, while also providing policy insight to the government.