The Greener Homes Scheme provides grants to help homeowners buy a home heating system that uses a renewable energy source. The scheme is administered by Sustainable Energy Ireland (SEI). 

What is renewable energy?

Renewable energy is energy that is created from sources that the earth can continue to provide indefinitely. Examples of renewable energy sources are:

• Solar power (from the sun)
• Heat pumps to use naturally occurring heat in the ground or water
• Biomass (made by burning certain types of wood and energy crops).

Renewable energy is sustainable because it does not harm the environment. The use of renewable energy in home heating systems will reduce Ireland’s dependency on oil, gas and other fossil fuels and will also reduce CO2 emissions.

Grants to install renewable energy heating systems

Home heating systems that use renewable energy are generally more expensive than other heating systems to install. The aim of the Greener Homes Scheme is to support homeowners to install and use renewable energy heating systems by providing installation grants.

Heating systems that use renewable energy may be more expensive to install but they can be cheaper to run.

In the case of heating systems that use solar energy, the energy source is free (sunshine) so considerable savings can be made in the future from running this system. A bio-mass system (for example, a wood- Pellet burner) uses wood from a renewable source to heat a home and a Heat Pump needs electricity to operate, so there are some costs involved in running these systems.