Press Statement

Preasráiteas

27 July 2021

Go to release: Domestic Building Energy Ratings from a Social Perspective 2016

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (27 July 2021) published Domestic Building Energy Ratings from a Social Perspective. The report combines data from the 2016 Census of Population with the Building Energy Ratings published by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland. The report examines the social situation of persons cross-classified by the energy efficiency of their dwellings. The report will inform the energy retrofit programme being undertaken as part of the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Statistician in the Environment and Climate Division, Dympna Corry commented: “Combining the Census of Population and Building Energy Ratings files provides a new environmental-social insight into who is living in the most and least energy-efficient dwellings.
Looking at the data, we found that households where the reference person was older, lived alone, or was a farmer had lower energy-efficiency ratings.”

Further commenting on factors that influence energy efficiency, Ms. Corry said: “Younger persons and families tend to live in more energy-efficient newly-built homes. For example, 16% of households where the reference person was in the 35-44 age group lived in “B” rated homes while a further 47% lived in “C” rated dwellings.

Households occupied with a mortgage or rented were typically more energy efficient than dwellings that were owned outright - the proportion of households with a "B" rating was 17% for households with a mortgage and 12% for rented households compared with 9% for households owned outright.

Households where the reference person was in employment had higher "B" (15%) and "C" (46%) energy ratings. In contrast, the proportion of households where the reference person was retired that had a "B" rating was 7% while 34% had a "C" rating.

Household reference persons who were in very good health lived in more energy-efficient dwellings. Around 15% of households with the reference person in very good health had a "B" rating compared with 8% of households where the reference person was in bad or very bad health. In contrast, 7% of reference persons in very bad health lived in "G" rated dwellings compared with 4% of reference persons in very good health.

Couples with children lived in the most energy-efficient dwellings with 16% of such households living in a "B" rated dwelling compared with 2% living in a "G" rating dwelling. For one-person households, 9% lived in a "B" rated dwelling while 8% lived in a "G" rated dwelling.”

Ms. Corry noted that: “The report looked at how the situation varied by county and by Dublin postal district.

There are not many instances of a county having 20% or higher of “G” rated dwellings. However, in the reference persons aged 75 years or over category, 20% of households in Longford and 22% in Offaly had “G” ratings.

For households owned outright, the older Dublin postal districts had higher levels of "G" ratings than of "B" ratings. For example, in Dublin 3 there were 12% of households owned without a mortgage that had a "G" rating compared with 7% with a "B" rating. Dublin postal districts 7, 8, 10, and 12 had similar patterns of higher "G" rated dwellings in the households owned outright category. In contrast, there were 18% of households owned outright with a "B" rating in Dublin 18 while only 3% had a "G" rating reflecting the higher proportion of new dwellings in that postal district.

Dublin 4 at 16% had the highest proportion of "G" rated dwellings for persons with a mobility difficulty inside the dwelling. Dublin 7 at 15% and Dublin 3 at 14% had the next highest proportions for this category.”

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