SEAI Support Scheme for Energy Audits

The SEAI Support Scheme for Energy Audits provides a fixed quote voucher toward a professional energy audit for small and medium businesses spending over a threshold amount on energy each year. The audit identifies costed efficiency measures and is frequently the evidence base for later energy grant applications. SMEs with a meaningful annual energy spend and no current audit.

What this scheme funds

a fixed quote voucher for a professional energy audit that identifies costed savings.

  • A professional energy audit by an SEAI-registered auditor
  • A costed register of efficiency measures

What it does not fund

These costs are routinely ruled ineligible under this scheme.

  • The measures themselves
  • Ongoing energy management services

Who is eligible

Eligibility is decided by SEAI, not by Digital Bridge.

  • SME with annual energy spend above the scheme threshold
  • Not already obliged to carry out audits under other regulations in some cases

How to apply

Typical end-to-end timeline: Typically a few weeks to voucher issue, then the auditor's own schedule.

  • Check the current threshold and scheme status on the SEAI site
  • Apply for the voucher
  • Appoint an SEAI-registered auditor
  • Complete the audit and redeem the voucher

Evidence you will need

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

  • Energy bills evidencing spend
  • Auditor details

Why applications get rejected

The recurring reasons assessors give under this scheme.

  • Energy spend below threshold
  • Auditor not registered

What Digital Bridge delivers under this scheme

Illustrative net cost applies the published rate (Voucher covering the cost of a professional energy audit) to our published engagement bands. It is arithmetic, not an offer of funding.

  • Dashboard to track the audit's recommended savings over time — list from €2,500, illustrative net cost Not covered — the a fixed quote voucher pays the registered auditor only

Who decides this grant, and what we are responsible for

SEAI 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 SEAI Energy Audit works in practice

The SEAI energy audit support pays toward a professional audit of a business's energy use, carried out by a registered auditor and producing a report with costed recommendations. It is aimed at SMEs whose energy spend is significant enough to justify examination but who have never had the consumption properly analysed. The audit is the product: there is no funding for works attached, though the report frequently unlocks other schemes. Its usefulness depends on the recommendations being acted on, and on the business having reasonably complete billing and consumption data for the auditor to work on a fixed quote. Gathering twelve months of bills before the auditor arrives measurably improves the output.

What we do as the supplier on the quote

We do not carry out energy audits and would not present ourselves as competent to. The only adjacent work we do is data: where a business wants meter readings, production volumes or fleet mileage captured consistently so that the audit's recommendations can be tracked afterwards, that is a straightforward monitoring build and it is priced separately from anything the scheme covers. If an audit's savings are never measured after implementation, nobody finds out whether the money worked, and that is a common and avoidable outcome.

What makes an SEAI energy audit worth the money?

An audit only pays for itself if somebody acts on it, and the difference between the reports that lead to work and the reports that sit in a drawer is usually access. An auditor who is given twelve months of meter data, a walk of the premises during normal operating hours and half an hour with whoever actually controls the heating produces recommendations that survive contact with the business. One who is handed a single bill and shown an empty building on a Saturday produces generic advice. Book the visit for a working day, gather the bills beforehand, and be honest about what has already been tried and rejected. The recommendations should come back costed and ranked, and you should be able to argue with them.

Is it worth doing before applying for an energy grant?

Usually yes. Most energy funding requires evidence that the measure delivers a saving, and an audit is the cleanest way to produce it.

Does the audit have to be done by a specific auditor?

Support is tied to auditors meeting SEAI's requirements, so check the current register before engaging anyone. Using an unregistered provider is a routine reason support is refused, even when the audit itself is technically sound.

Source and last review

Scheme parameters checked against SEAI — Support Scheme for Energy Audits (https://www.seai.ie/business-and-public-sector/small-and-medium-business/energy-audits/) 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.

What does an energy audit have to do with a digital or AI project?

More than most owners expect, and the connection is data. An audit produces a documented picture of where energy is being consumed, and that picture is only as good as the metering and record-keeping underneath it. Businesses that come out of an audit with a solid list of actions are almost always the ones that already record something systematically: production hours, occupancy, run times, delivery schedules. Businesses that come out with vague recommendations usually have no usable records at all. Where we get involved is that second group, because the recommendation is frequently to start measuring, and measuring at any scale means a small system rather than another clipboard. We would not describe that as an AI project, and we would be wary of anyone who did. It is basic instrumentation and reporting, and it is worth doing before anything cleverer, because energy analytics on top of guessed inputs produce confident nonsense.

Who should be in the room when the auditor visits?

Whoever actually operates the equipment, not only the person who signs off the invoices. Audits go wrong when the walk-around is conducted with an owner who knows the building but not the daily rhythm of how machinery, refrigeration, heating or lighting are used in practice. The person who opens up in the morning generally knows which unit has been left running for two years and which thermostat everybody overrides. Prepare by pulling twelve months of bills together, noting any change in operating hours over that period, and listing equipment that has been added or retired, because an auditor reconciling consumption against an out-of-date equipment list will spend the visit on arithmetic instead of observation. Afterwards, treat the report as a work plan with owners and dates rather than a document to be filed, since the common failure is not a bad audit but a good one that nobody actions.

How we decide what to quote for Energy Audits

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. The SEAI Support Scheme for Energy Audits provides a fixed quote voucher toward a professional energy audit for small and medium businesses spending over a threshold amount on energy each year. 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 Energy Audits 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 Energy Audits 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 Energy Audits 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.