Home Is Where The Hearth Is

Simon Whelan at Goldfish HQ THURS12MAY22

ith the health of the planet no longer the sole concern of the 1960s flower power generation, it would seem everyone is thinking about smarter, cleaner, greener ways to live there days.

From embracing zero waste to – yikes! – letting the kids walk to school, few people are now living on this planet as if we had another one to go to.

Except maybe The Donald. And that nutter up on Crowe Abbey.

One of the biggest battles right now is the one between heating our homes and heating the planet, with energy prices soaring just as many old traditional methods of keeping your tootsie warm are tried and convicted with costing the earth.

When money’s too tight to mention, trying to make the righteous choice is a luxury not everyone can afford, but there’s little doubt that investing in smarter, greener sources of energy for our homes makes both sense and cents.

“It definitely works out cheaper in the long run when you have the right kind of insulation and heating in your home,” says Simon Whelan of Kilcoole’s Glenergy. “It’s just that inititial spend can be hard for people, with the average heat pump system for a house costing around €14,000.

“Thankfully, there are a bunch of grants to help with that, covering up to €6,000 of the cost, so there’s never been a better time to make this kind of move.”

Top marks to The Beach House

Having recently fitted Solar PV panels on the roof of The Beach House (“Worked a treat for them“) and a top-of-the-aga-range heat pump at Goldfish’s 100-year-old Yarra Yarra home down on the harbour, Glenergy have seen a sharp increase in demand for such eco-retrofits.

Add to that the official unveiling of the new Greystones Green Energy website next week (pulling together the first major analysis of energy use in the community), plus the latest round of home energy grants just unveiled, and the future around here is certainly looking green.

Given that we’re a town riddled with clicktavists though, how much of the town’s environmental credentials are real though, and how much of it is just hot air?

We decided to get a few answers from the man with his finger on the pulse, and the purse…

You can find out more about Glenergy here, about heat pumps here, solar panels here and home energy grants here, plus the new Greystones Green Energy site here. You can also check out Goldfish here, The Beach House here.and our earlier interview with Simon here.