Sustainable Energy Communities workshop hosted in Tait House

Sustainable Energy Communities workshop – Senator Maria Byrne, Tait House CEO Tracey Corbett Lynch and Mihai Bilauca, Limerick City and County Council attended the workshop for Sustainable Energy Communities is an event organised by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI). The event took place on Tuesday evening, July 24 in Tait House Community Enterprise Centre. Picture: Baoyan Zhang/ilovelimerick

Sustainable Energy Communities workshop hosted in Tait House

By ilovelimerick Correspondent Cathal Doherty

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Yesterday evening, Tait House Community Enterprise in Southill hosted an important Sustainable Energy Communities workshop in conjunction with the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI). The aim of the workshop was to bring communities together through SEAI energy projects in order to educate people within the community in various ways that they can create energy savings.

The Sustainable Energy Communities is a network of over 130 communities around Ireland who are interested in community energy. Some members such as Tait House Community Enterprise have been influencing local energy use for years under the Warmer Homes project addressing fuel poverty, while others are thinking about it for the first time.

The Sustainable Energies Communities Programme is a project that has been running for the last year and has educated and helped people within communities to gain better heating and insulation for their homes or local buildings and in return reduce the use of fossil fuels across the country.

“We are hoping to educate people on the Sustainable Energy Communities Programme which is a new support for communities. These supports might be anything from upgrading or insulating your local community centre, doing up a house in your area or even upgrading your business,” said Gearóid Fitzgibbon, a spokesperson, and specialist in community energy & social entrepreneurship. 

The SEAI provide plenty of funding and tech advice. Communities can achieve many benefits by contacting or joining an SEC, such as lower energy bills, improve public well-being, boost local employment, build energy knowledge and skills and contribute to national emissions targets.

Tait House Community Enterprise is a not for profit social enterprise and have a cluster of social enterprises with about twenty in the network. They aim to improve the lives of people in the community, by creating employment opportunities, by providing training, and creating community enterprise ventures. They also provide everything from hairdressers and a community grocery to people within the community that need them.

 Gearóid Fitzgibbon, a specialist in community energy & social entrepreneurship, Tracey Lynch, CEO of Tait House and Gillian Gannon, SEAI Programme Executive pictured at the workshop at Tait House. Picture: Baoyan Zhang/ilovelimerick

“We deliver thermal upgrades and retrofitting projects in domestic and commercial projects across Limerick City and County and we are the only community-based organisation within Limerick delivering under these programmes,” commented Tracey Lynch, CEO Tait House.

Over the last five years, over 2,000 homes in Tipperary have been made warmer and better insulated and Gearóid Fitzgibbon wants to see the same impact on Limerick and believes the SEC programme will be a success. “Each year there are thousands of homes made warmer and people saving money on their energy bills and we want to increase that. That’s the difference it makes, people are living more comfortably in their home, living better and saving more money.”

To find out more about the SEC programme, click here

To read more stories on Tait House, click here