A new €55 million ‘Green Transition’ fund has been announced today (June 16) to help businesses move away from fossil fuels and towards more sustainable, cheaper alternatives. The fund will help businesses develop plans and build capacity within their organisations to deliver change. There is also funding available for manufacturing businesses to upgrade to more energy efficient processes.
Welcoming the announcement today, Malcolm Noonan TD, Minister of State, said: “Businesses have shown incredible resilience over the past couple of years and having emerged from the pandemic are now facing more immediately than ever before the necessity of ‘going green’. It is a welcome prospect but one that has understandably carried with it concerns around financial, and indeed temporal, cost. Today’s announced €55m Green Transition Fund is designed to help assuage those concerns and contribute to achieving our ambitious climate targets.” The Green Transition Fund is part of Ireland’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), which is funded by the European Union. The programmes will run over the next five years. Ireland is expected to receive more than €900 million in grants over the lifetime of the Facility. The Green Transition Fund comprises:
A €25 million Climate Planning Fund for Business, which will give businesses funding to come up with a personalised plan to identify how best to remove reliance on fossil fuels in their business. A €1,800 grant to develop a plan and up to €50,000 matched funding to go towards specific capacity building within an enterprise are among the grants available.
A €30 million Enterprise Emissions Reduction Investment Fund, which will give manufacturing businesses funding to invest in carbon neutral heating processes, smart metering and energy monitoring, and research and development. Up to €1m is available for businesses to upgrade their processes.