Experts said consumers were rushing to upgrade their homes and move to EV cars to increase energy efficient to counter some of the impacts of rising energy prices.<\/p>\n
Banks said what they call green lending has reached a record high.<\/p>\n
Green personal loans include finance for an electric vehicle or funding to carry out works to make a home more energy efficient.<\/p>\n
And credit unions have reported a hike in demand for energy-saving home upgrades.<\/p>\n
Green loans taken out from credit unions are averaging more than \u20ac20,000.<\/p>\n
The banks said the number of green personal loans taken out last year shot up by 26pc compared with the previous year.<\/p>\n
The Banking and Payments Federation Ireland said the average green loan its members issued was relatively high at \u20ac23,000 in the last three months of last year.<\/p>\n
\nThis would add \u20ac150 over a year to the average household bill<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
This is more than twice the average of \u20ac10,400 for all loans in the same quarter.<\/p>\n
In annual terms, green loan volumes jumped by 25.8pc to 6,516 loans, and values rose by 27.7pc to \u20ac152.6m, the banking body said.<\/p>\n
Experts said consumers want to make their homes more energy efficient as costs rise.<\/p>\n
Ireland has the most expensive electricity in the 27 states that make up the European Union, according to the EU statistical agency Eurostat.<\/p>\n
An average household in this country pays around \u20ac480 a year more for their electricity compared with the EU average.<\/p>\n
Electricity prices in Ireland are almost 40pc above EU average, according to Eurostat.<\/p>\n
Last week PrepayPower, which has 240,000 customer accounts, became the first energy supplier since the outbreak of the war in the Middle East to announce an increase in the price of its gas and electricity.<\/p>\n
There are fears that the more than one million customers of Electric Ireland will be next to be hit with electricity and gas price increases.<\/p>\n
Energy Minister Darragh O\u2019Brien said recently that electricity prices could rise by up to 9pc, a move that would add \u20ac150 over a year to the average household bill.<\/p>\n
Credit unions said that members of what is called Greenify said huge numbers of their members are borrowing to invest in energy-saving home improvements and electric vehicles.<\/p>\n
\nLoan values range from \u20ac20,075 for home to \u20ac21,550 for EVs<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Greenify is a national green lending initiative made up of 34 credit unions that came together to form what they call Collaborative Finance. It was set up to offer standardised green-loan products with a common rate.<\/p>\n
Greenify is a consumer loan product with a 5.5pc rate for people who want to make their homes more efficient or to buy an EV.<\/p>\n
The credit unions said there was strong demand for green loans, with loan values ranging from \u20ac20,075 for home improvements to \u20ac21,550 for electric vehicles.<\/p>\n
This is close to twice the average credit union loan outstanding of \u20ac11,000.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Banking and Payments Federation said overall annual personal loan activity, including car, home improvement and green loans, reached record highs last year.<\/p>\n
Total loan volumes rose by almost 20pc to 272,980 compared with 2024, while loan values also rose by almost 20pc reaching more than \u20ac2.9bn over the same period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Experts said consumers were rushing to upgrade their homes and move to EV cars to increase energy efficient…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,2107,2190,20617,13458,18,40296,440,4893,13,14,6,19,18929,17,11,12,15,16,2108,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-472830","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-charlie-weston","11":"tag-cost-of-living","12":"tag-credit-unions","13":"tag-darragh-obrien","14":"tag-eire","15":"tag-electric-ireland","16":"tag-environment","17":"tag-eu","18":"tag-featured-news","19":"tag-featurednews","20":"tag-headlines","21":"tag-ie","22":"tag-iran","23":"tag-ireland","24":"tag-latest-news","25":"tag-latestnews","26":"tag-main-news","27":"tag-mainnews","28":"tag-money-experts","29":"tag-news","30":"tag-top-stories","31":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116532979317880280","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}