Green Building Week was last week and in Dublin 22 there was a lot of praised in Cairn Homes' Seven Mills Development in Cairn Homes.
With high energy efficiency, the houses are called almost zero energy buildings and praise the biological diversity to create landscape design. They look great and the design is commendable.
But what is immediately noticeable about the brand new mini city is the lack of solaries on the roofs. Why do we waste the possibility of using every roof, house and building surface as a microgenerator when Ireland is so far behind its solar energy destinations?
Ireland's solar energy target is to generate 8 GW energy by 2030 – about five times more than at the moment – despite this gap, Solar Ireland, the industry network, has estimates of Ireland up to a million roofs that are suitable for solar generation but are idle.
And while the government is financing the scholarships for solar systems in existing houses, it is not necessary for developers to include Solar-PV in new houses. At least nine EU countries already have a solar band for new buildings, while Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland have a mandate for existing buildings.
Sit into a train from Dublin to Midlands and you can count the Solar Panel roofs in new housing estates that indicate a lack of strategies.
While the EU is demanding that all new residential buildings will be optimized for solar energy by the revised energy output of the building directive by January 2030, even “green buildings” are not shown in Solar in Ireland.
Cairn Homes is enough to sell its “sustainable” commitment, but while energy efficiency and low carbon construction are very welcome, the lack of energy generation (if it is so much easier to include in construction) shows on a system failure.
Even passive energy houses need energy, and if the residents drive an EV car at the end, they have to pull more electricity from the network. Likewise, solar in these houses with low energy means that they can return the power supply to the network and benefit both the residents and the public.
Each roof surface should be seen as climate protection. Solar PV is a simple addition during the construction work and an action that could drastically accelerate our solar energy generation and dramatically accelerate both energy and climate goals.
Why do we still leave the developers when we are only a few years away from a mandatory sun requirement in new buildings? Government policy should ensure that everything that is now being built is future-proof, supports decarbonization and enables Ireland to meet its CO2 budget. We have to marry energy efficiency with energy generation.
Instead, Ireland ignores the opportunity of the unused roof space both in living space and in commercial buildings, we develop commercial solar parks that often redirect arable land into energy generation.
Country is a precious and limited resource – we need land not only for the construction of houses and infrastructures, but for new local tree forests, for nature and for biological diversity, for restored Boglands and for critical for the cultivation of food.
The simplest way and not the endless retrofitting is that every new building is optimized for the production of renewable energies. While the roofs of househouses are obvious, balconies in apartments are also ideal for solar.
However, if some developers are waiting for the EU to commission solar in their houses, it is good to see the local authorities that add solar to the delivery of social homes. The city council of Dublin recorded solar in the Thornton Heights Complex in Inchicore over 10 years ago, and it has just published a planning application for 38 apartments in Dublin 12 with heat pumps, solarphotovoltaic panels and green/blue roofs.
If Ireland builds at least 30,000 new houses a year (with a necessity of 50 to 60,000) and we currently have 140,000 house microgen (mostly existing retrofitted houses), the prescription of Solar in new houses that were approved by 2026 could accelerate our ability to achieve our solar energy target from 2030.
Why wait? In this tandem, we should primarily priority solar systems in existing public buildings, including social living space, and financing, so that all social houses are quickly climatic for both energy efficiency and energy generation.
Instead of waiting for our goals of 2030 and ultimately paying the long-term costs (in socio-economic, ecological consequences) and non-attitude sentences, like many of our EU neighboring barn, we should use every roof to solve our problems and create a better future for everyone.
- Helen Shaw is a researcher and writer for climate protection. She leads Athena Media and is an author in Residence 2025 at the Data Stories Project on Housing Data at Maynooth University