Master plan will help Greencastle residents and businesses to cut energy costs

Homeowners, businesses and community facilities in the Greencastle area are to be encouraged to find ways to reduce energy usage as part of an energy master plan for the area.

Greencastle Community Centre has secured funding from the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland  (SEAI) for the master plan, which will be a comprehensive report which outlines local energy data and identifies opportunities to reduce energy consumption.

The centre will work to gather data about Greencastle’s energy usage for the creation of the plan which will help homeowners,  businesses and community buildings to transition to energy-efficient operations and green energy utilisation.

As part of the data collection, those taking part in the data collection can avail of a free energy audit.

Manager of the  Greencastle Community Centre, Susan McAleer, said the master plan “is a big deal” for the community and has been a work in progress for the last few months. The work on the actual is now  “getting up and running”.

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The community centre will be working with consultants “who will do the energy audit and the whole energy assessment”.

“We are at the very early stages of just putting the word out and making introductions with the local community between homeowners, community buildings and businesses.”

The energy master plan will look at the “energy status of the community,” which takes in everything that forms the community energy usage including electrical, thermal and transport-related energy.

“What we do with this then is identify ways within the community, with the help of our consultants, of how we can better use energy efficiency and renewable energy.”

Susan McAleer, manager of the Greencastle Community Centre, says the funding for the energy master plan is great for the  area

The consultants will advise homeowners and businesses on projects and funding that can improve the BER rating of their property and “find what ways they can save money, save energy”. 

“It is about looking at energy efficiencies on a local scale and how our community can achieve more energy efficiency and use more renewable energy.”

The community centre has held an open day on the energy master and those who attended have been invited to take part in the data collection. An open call has also been put out to homeowners, businesses and community facilities to take part. 

Susan said the team at the community centre is delighted to have received the funding for the energy master plan.

“It has been a lot of work we have been putting in in the background to get to this point, and it does open up a lot of doors. It is great for the community, homeowners and the area.”