Green for Micro

Green for Micro gives small businesses up to two days of fully funded consultancy from an approved sustainability expert. The output is a practical action plan covering energy, waste, water, resource efficiency and carbon reporting, which is frequently the evidence required for a later Energy Efficiency Grant application. Micro-enterprises that need a credible starting point on sustainability or supply-chain carbon questions.

What this scheme funds

Two days of free sustainability consultancy — the usual gateway to energy funding.

  • Consultant review of energy, waste, water and resource use
  • A written green action plan with prioritised measures
  • Guidance on carbon reporting requests from larger customers

What it does not fund

These costs are routinely ruled ineligible under this scheme.

  • Any physical works or equipment
  • Ongoing consultancy beyond the funded days

Who is eligible

Eligibility is decided by Local Enterprise Office, not by Digital Bridge.

  • Micro-enterprise, commonly up to 10 employees
  • Registered and trading in the county of application

How to apply

Typical end-to-end timeline: Usually a few weeks from application to consultant assignment, depending on intake.

  • Apply through your Local Enterprise Office
  • Get matched with an approved consultant
  • Complete the review and receive the action plan
  • Use the plan to support an Energy Efficiency Grant application

Evidence you will need

Applications are usually delayed by missing paperwork rather than by weak projects.

  • Basic company details
  • Willingness to give the consultant access to usage data

Why applications get rejected

The recurring reasons assessors give under this scheme.

  • Business is above the size threshold
  • No intake currently open in the county

What Digital Bridge delivers under this scheme

Illustrative net cost applies the published rate (100% funded advisory (no cash award)) to our published engagement bands. It is arithmetic, not an offer of funding.

  • Sustainability page and green credentials content for your website — list from €1,200, illustrative net cost Not grant-funded — Green for Micro pays the consultant, not the implementation work
  • Implementation of the report's digital actions (paperless workflows, remote-first tooling) — list from €2,500, illustrative net cost Fund separately through Grow Digital or LEO Energy Efficiency, if eligible

Who decides this grant, and what we are responsible for

Local Enterprise Office decides eligibility, approval and payment under this scheme. Digital Bridge supplies the work and the documentation an assessor asks for from the supplier side.

  • Digital Bridge does not administer, assess, approve, pay or appeal any grant. Every decision is made by the funding body named on the scheme, under its own published rules.
  • This section is general information, not financial, tax, legal or grant-writing advice. It is not an application, a pre-approval, or any form of assurance that you will be funded.
  • Scheme rates, ceilings and eligibility change without notice and several supports are administered locally, so your Local Enterprise Office or agency may apply different rules to the ones published here. Confirm everything with the funder in writing before you commit.
  • Our questionnaire is a deterministic guide based only on the answers you give. It cannot see your accounts, your sector classification, your state-aid position or your previous awards, so it can suggest a scheme you are ultimately found ineligible for.
  • If an application is refused, delayed, reduced or clawed back, our fees for work you have instructed remain payable. We recommend you do not instruct chargeable work until your funder confirms in writing what it will support.
  • Costs incurred before a funder receives your application are almost always ineligible. Timing is your responsibility, and we will always tell you when we think you should wait.

How the Green for Micro works in practice

Green for Micro provides free mentoring to very small businesses that want to reduce environmental impact but do not know where to start. Two mentoring sessions produce a report covering resource use, waste, energy and, increasingly, supply-chain expectations. It is not a funding scheme and no money changes hands, which is the main source of confusion. Its practical value is often commercial rather than environmental: businesses tendering to larger customers are being asked sustainability questions they cannot currently answer, and the mentor's report gives them a documented baseline. The programme suits companies under ten employees; larger firms are directed to different supports.

What we do as the supplier on the quote

Our involvement, where there is any, is downstream of the report. Businesses sometimes want the resulting commitments reflected publicly — a sustainability page, supplier questionnaire responses, or a way of recording and reporting the measures they have actually taken. We will build that, and we will push back on wording that overstates the position, because unevidenced environmental claims carry real regulatory and reputational risk in Ireland and across the EU. A page that says precisely what has been measured and changed is more useful, and considerably safer, than one that says the business is green.

What does Green for Micro realistically deliver?

Green for Micro is a short advisory intervention for very small businesses, and the honest description is that it produces a starting plan rather than a completed project. Two half-day sessions with an adviser will tell you where your emissions and costs actually sit, which is frequently not where the owner assumed, and give you a small number of actions worth doing first. What it will not do is pay for the actions. Businesses that get value from it treat the report as a shopping list to be worked through over a year, funded separately, and revisited. Those that do not act typically found the adviser could not get usable data because nobody had kept the bills or metered anything.

Is there money attached?

No. Green for Micro is advisory only. Its value is the plan, which is normally the evidence a funded energy measure needs afterwards.

Is Green for Micro worth doing if we are already energy conscious?

Often yes, because the output is documentation rather than discovery. Businesses bidding for larger contracts increasingly need a written baseline and improvement plan, and producing one through the programme costs the business time rather than money.

Source and last review

Scheme parameters checked against Local Enterprise Office — Green for Micro (https://www.localenterprise.ie/Discover-Business-Supports/Green-for-Micro/) on 2026-08-21. Reviewed quarterly. Next scheduled review: November 2026. Digital Bridge is a supplier, not the awarding body. Eligibility, approval and payment are decided solely by the funding body named on each scheme. Figures below are the published scheme parameters as at the review date shown, and net costs are arithmetic illustrations of the published rate applied to our published prices. Always confirm current rules with the funder before you commit to any spend, because expenditure incurred before an application is received is almost always ineligible.

Where does a micro business usually find the quick sustainability wins?

In our experience with small Irish service and retail businesses, the early wins are rarely dramatic. They cluster around three areas: how goods and people move, what gets thrown away, and what runs when nobody is there. Route and scheduling waste is the one owners most often underestimate — a trades business making two trips to the same estate in a week is burning fuel and an hour of labour that better job sequencing removes, which is a scheduling problem before it is an environmental one. Packaging and print waste is the second, and it is measurable within a month. Standby consumption is the third and the least interesting, but it is genuinely free to fix. What all three have in common is that they need a fortnight of honest recording before anything can be claimed, which is why we push clients to start counting before they start changing.

How do you avoid the sustainability claim that comes back to bite you?

By only saying what you can evidence, and by dating it. Irish and EU rules on environmental claims have tightened considerably, and vague website copy — “eco-friendly”, “green”, “carbon neutral” — is now a liability rather than a differentiator unless there is something specific behind it. When we build or rewrite a site for a business that has done real work here, we phrase it concretely: what was changed, when, and what it measurably reduced, with the caveat that the figure covers the business's own operations rather than its whole supply chain. That reads as more credible to customers anyway, because it sounds like a business describing its own operation rather than borrowing marketing language. If a client cannot produce the underlying number, we leave the claim off the site entirely and say why. An unprovable green claim is worth less than silence and carries real regulatory exposure.

How we decide what to quote for Micro

Digital Bridge delivers this work from Gorey Business Park in County Wexford on a fixed written scope — one price, one delivery date — and the client owns the finished work outright. Green for Micro gives small businesses up to two days of fully funded consultancy from an approved sustainability expert. Before a figure is given, four questions are answered in order, and a named person signs the scope off — it is never generated automatically.

  1. Is this the right job at all? We look at what you already have online, whether the domain and Google Business Profile are in your own name, and what Micro customers currently ask you for. If a repair or a single page would solve it, we quote that instead.
  2. What does the work have to achieve first? The scope is written around one outcome — enquiries, bookings, orders or credibility — and anything else is listed as optional so it can be dropped without renegotiating.
  3. What will it cost and when will it be live? Page count, content readiness, integrations and whether photography or copy still has to be produced set the price and the date, both fixed in writing before work starts.
  4. How will people in Micro find it afterwards? Local search setup is included in a build; ongoing SEO is a separate optional retainer you can start or stop with notice.

Checkable facts behind this Micro page

Author and reviewer: Joey Bray, founder of Digital Bridge, building and maintaining Irish business websites since 2016. Studio address: Gorey Business Park, Gorey, Co. Wexford. Phone: 085 224 1848. Every claim below can be checked before you speak to us.

  • Published starting prices, not estimates released after a sales call — see the pricing page for the full ladder.
  • Live client sites you can open and test yourself are listed in the work section.
  • One contact from first call to launch, rather than an account handler relaying messages.
  • A plain-text mirror of this page is published for AI assistants at the same path with a .md extension.