John Gormley and Eamon Ryan may mean well, but they keep wasting our money with silly populist initiatives that do nothing to help the environment - but do everything to give your money away to some interest group

In February 2009 Richard Tol warned they were pushing a white elephant:
The Irish Economy Blog Archive National insulation for economic recovery: As second best as it gets

The results are in, and even the SEAI themselves admit it is a failure:

The Irish Economy Blog Archive Warmer Homes
These two ministers are well meaning, but not all that bright- civil servants aren't used to concocting Green programmes. Can we please shut these two guys down before they burn any more of our money ?

Gov announce €5k grant + no VRT for electric vehicles

cYp

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Its a no-brainer. People with no jobs can't afford home/energy improvements, or to change their cars.

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how do you expect the Greens to know that.with all the back-slapping and self praise they are heaping on themselves shure there'd be no place for reality

I think you're being generous in calling them well-meaning seeing as they are keeping FF in government and have happily agreed to all the compromises necessary. Like NAMA, nationalisation of Anglo-Irish, putting their muppets into well-paid posts.....

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It's an age-old problem. The people who can least afford to insulate/improve their homes are the ones struggling with their home heating bills and those who are better placed to actually afford the improvements are less likely to do them because these bills are a smaller % of their disposable income.

I just read the executive summary and I think it's a stretch to say the program failed. There was no doubt about the improvement in houses that benefited from the program.

The only issue to my mind is the methodology used to select the control group for comparison purposes. But, that's an issue with the research project and not with the Warmer Homes program itself.

Surely, it's a no-brainer that adding insulation to poorly insulated houses is a good idea?

i thought the insulation grants were approved before the greens ever came to power,they just claimed it as their own. correct me if i'm wrong but 2006 is the year that is coming to mind

Putting in Insulation to save fuel longer term is a great idea as people who can afford it will always do it and would not be in fuel poverty anyway.

Similar system operates in UK and being gone a lot longer and pretty much no doubt as to its effectiveness.

One item alone will not make a difference as its over a longer period of time with of course the variable in energy use being decided by the weather.

Tol has had a bee in his bonnet every since his analysis of the Poolbeg incinerator was shown to be flawed, requiring him to re-publish his work.

The Warmer Homes Scheme was a small scheme with a budget of approx. €10m. It didn't achieve massive savings in costs or emissions, but it did achieve savings, and make the homes of people on lower incomes a lot more comfortable.

The fact that costs didn't go down as much as had been hoped could be simply explained by people using the same amount of fuel as before but not shivering in their beds at night. The analysis doesn't take account of weather differences either.

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Countries than produce fewer total CO2 emissions than Ireland:

Bangladesh (Pop. 162m)
Ethiopia (Pop. 80m)
Peru (Pop.30m)


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