A “green divide” has emerged among Irish households with electric vehicles, solar panels and heat pumps strongly concentrated in affluent areas.
Research from Trinity College Dublin shows clean technologies are much more likely to be adopted in well-off areas inhabited by people working in management roles who own their homes rather than in lower-income areas with many renters.
It says the current grants system perpetuates inequality by favouring the wealthy.
EVs and heat pumps are five to seven times more prevalent in better-off places than in lower-income neighbourhoods, but the difference is as much as 13-fold between the highest and lowest income areas. An east-west, urban-rural divide is also evident.
“High-income areas and professional households – particularly in counties like Dublin, Meath, and Kildare – show significantly higher adoption rates, while lower-income regions such as Leitrim, Longford, and Donegal remain underrepresented,” the report says.
Prof Brian Caulfield, who led the study, said the grants system deepened divides by failing to grade supports according to income and by requiring people to pay upfront and be reimbursed afterwards.
He criticised the recent decision to increase the value of grants without introducing other reforms, saying it perpetuated the inequality.
“Adding more money just enables people in the leafier parts of the country to use these grants more so their second car is also an EV and they make more savings from solar,” he said.
“People who don’t have means to make those investments or pay upfront can’t afford to break out of fossil fuel dependence.
“We have a green divide. It is utterly unfair.”
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The report says policy reforms are essential to close the gaps. Front-loaded or means-tested grants, low or zero-interest retrofit and EV loans, more publicly accessible EV chargers and scrappage schemes for car owners switching to EVs are recommended.
Caulfield said such ideas worked in other countries.
“In Scotland, you’re means-tested for grants so you get more help the more you need,” he said. “In Los Angeles, they have EV rental schemes that are much cheaper for people on social welfare. There are ways in which we can address inequalities.”
The study reveals other trends, including the “neighbour effect” where visible green technologies such as solar panels, EVs and home chargers encouraged other people to adopt them.
[ Rooftop solar panels could produce 25% of household electricity, UCC study findsOpens in new window ]
The effect was less obvious with heat pumps and was not of much help in lower-income areas dominated by apartments and renters, where people did not have their own driveway or roof.
Caulfield conducted the study with Abhilash C Singh from the Centre for Transport Research at Trinity. Their work is published in the journal Energy Research and Social Science.
The findings have been submitted to the Just Transition Commission and Climate Change Advisory Council for consideration in future recommendations to Government.
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