A client sought to better understand the likely impacts on market share for certain fuel products used in the residential heating sector across Ireland (all-island) in the event of the implementation of mooted changes to environmental legislation.
Byrne Ó Cléirigh was appointed to model and evaluate the impacts associated with the proposed changes. We developed a model to calculate and analyse the impacts on the demand for certain types of fuels in the residential sector – on a region-by-region basis – and of the associated environmental implications of same, in terms of emissions to air.
We used statistical data as inputs and analysed the propensity for consumers within twenty-five different fuel-use segments to adopt up to sixteen alternative behaviours in the event of the proposed legislative changes. These included simple fuel-switching using existing equipment, adoption of alternative fossil fuels and renewable heating solutions using new equipment (requiring capital expenditure), demand reduction, and perseverance with the status quo.
While all of the options considered were technically viable, we concluded that some were much more likely to be adopted at significant scale than others. We quantified the impacts of the proposed legislative amendments in terms of:
- Changes in market demand across Ireland for sixteen different fuel types.
- Changes to associated emissions of particulates (PM10, PM2.5), oxides of nitrogen (NOX), oxides of sulphur (SOX) and benzo[a]pyrene (B[a]P).