Under the Climate Action Plan, Ireland has ambitious renovation targets to meet. The Irish Green Building Council (IGBC) is working to enable the renovation roll out, to track the data on renovation, and to upskill the industry.

This webinar is part of a series called “What IGBC does” where IGBC staff present all the initiatives of the organisation. This was  the 2nd webinar of this series, and it focused on the projects that aim to accelerate energy renovation in Ireland: Build Upon, Turnkey Retrofit, EE Trad Buildings Skills, DASBE and, of course, BUSLeague.

Marion Jammet, Head of Advocacy, kicked off the meeting by giving an overview of what IGBC has done so far to help advancing energy renovation in Ireland. In 2017, IGBC started a large scale consultation on Ireland’s LTRS with 200 key stakeholders across the Country that helped us develop recommendations on energy renovation. The recommendations can be summed up in the 6 points below:

  1. Upskill the Whole Supply Chain
  2. Set the Right Standards
  3. Invest in Deep Energy Renovation Now
  4. Facilitate Deep Energy Renovation
  5. Make Deep Renovation Desirable
  6. Develop a Comprehensive National Framework

The work IGBC’s carrying on energy renovation is build up around these recommendations.

Alice Ryan, Membership & Education Manager, talked about how IGBC is working to upskill the supply chain. Regarding this subject, Alice talked about Build Up skill App, an app designed to enable building professionals and construction workers to identify energy renovation training courses and BusLeague project.

Alice explained to the audience that the aim of the BUSLeague project is to stimulate demand for energy training. She focused on the particular aspect of the project to upskill employees working in hardware stores. Employees of selected stores will receive nZEB training from product suppliers and will be encouraged to do further energy skills training (for example the nZEB Fundamental Awareness course at WWETB). She emphasized that the message to staff at hardware stores was to encourage homeowners to engage a retrofit professional when planning any retrofit work.

Alice also suggested to visit the learning hub where the IGBC upload key resources on renovation, and DASBE, a new digital portal for building professionals upskilling.

Marion then covered other activities of IGBC in particular the development of the proposed training clause in public tenders to support upskilling in energy efficiency (BUSLeague Project). She also covered other initiatives such as promoting policy to support energy renovation like minimum energy performance standards, green leases and energy efficiency mortgages

Johanna Varghese, Turnkey retrofit programme manager, presented IGBC activities that aim to make renovation desirable through a one stop shop for retrofit with a customer journey easy and enjoyable.

Alice presented also IGBC pilot on building renovation passport in Ireland that will be used on the retrofit platform.

Finally, Marion introduced that IGBC have been working to update the guidance on retrofit traditional building and is developing a national renovation (under Build Upon 2 project) that will be launched in October.

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