Skills and the Deep Retrofit Pilot

We learnt this week, the Deep Retrofit Pilot run by The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) is finished and no more funding is being made available. Its disappointing to those in the process of applying and will be disruptive and damaging to organisations involved in the program. Especially as there is nothing to replace it.

Grant funding is rarely, if ever perfect and I am sure there will be discussions on how fair it is, how the money was spent and the mechanisms of delivery and so on. But I want to focus on the potential damage to skills in the Industry.

Deep retrofit done well, as anyone in the sector can tell you is hard, Deep Retrofit at scale is even harder. To borrow a phrase from the late Neil May. "its not rocket science, its much harder than that".

Internationally governments and organisations are working hard to unpick this puzzle. From offsite solutions increasing repeat ability to strengthening local skills to deal with differences and nuances of local housing stock.

But if one thing is consistent everywhere, it's the need for quality and skills in this specialized sector.

I work throughout the UK in this area as well as Ireland, and over the last few years the Deep Retrofit Pilot Program along with other schemes funded by SEAI including the likes of Tipperary Energy Agencies 'Superhomes' scheme have been recognized by our colleagues elsewhere in the UK and further afield as setting standards.

We are achieving things here with an organised engagement of local trades and supervision of quality that I can tell you is the envy of many of our neighbors. And this has not been by accident. It has been achieved by years of dedication and professionalism of those driving this sector, including good people withing local energy agencies, SEAI and Government departments. This has paid off with small businesses committing to upscaling and upskilling to deal with the demand.

In part now, these schemes are a victim of there own success and for at least two years demand is consistently outstripped supply. And i know, you can argue this is driven by grants, and as i mentioned, there inherent fairness, use and implementation should and will be scrutinized. But at a time when we have national targets to scale up significantly, now more than ever we are going to need the infrastructure and skills to deliver it.

Our success of engaging small business to deliver these schemes is also its weakness, as even a small hiatus from here to what ever scheme or mechanism comes next will mean a loss in skills we cant afford the time to rebuild.

You can also make the case that, as the construction industry is yet again overly reliant on new build. Diversity in this sector is as important as ever with or without external threats like Brexit and downturns.

In my opinion the Deep Retrofit Pilot and other similar schemes should be seen as good investments in the necessary skills and capacity required to hit our increasingly tough targets in the climate action plan. Please do not let that investment go to waste. When i talk about skills and capacity I am also talking about real people and there jobs .