We are proud to share that KORE Retrofit has won the Residential Energy Upgrades award at the 2026 SEAI Energy Awards, and that our Commercial & Sustainability Director at KORE, Caroline Ashe Brady, has received the Chair's Award for Outstanding Contribution to Sustainable Energy.
Two wins in one night is a moment for the whole KORE team. It is also a moment for every homeowner, architect, contractor and supply-chain partner who has trusted us with their homes and worked alongside us to prove what Irish retrofit can achieve.
Residential Energy Upgrades: recognising retrofit at scale
The award recognises what we set out to build: a retrofit service that delivers high performance not once, but over and over, across Ireland's diverse housing stock. In 2025 alone, KORE completed approximately 600 residential retrofit projects, from energy upgrades to deep retrofits delivered to EnerPHit, AECB CarbonLite and Traditional Homes Pilot standards.
As Ireland's first registered One Stop Shop for residential retrofit, we take homeowners from first assessment to final handover. That means design, surveying, contractor coordination, SEAI grant administration, project management and post-works validation, all under one roof.
Three principles sit behind every project:
Fabric first. High-performance insulation, tested airtightness, careful elimination of thermal bridging and windows and doors matched to the whole envelope.
Healthy homes. Airtightness only works when it is balanced with good ventilation, so we design in demand-controlled and heat recovery ventilation to protect indoor air quality and manage moisture.
Repeatable quality. Systemised design, standard technical details and shared data across surveying, design and construction mean the thousandth home gets the same care as the first.
We focus on verified outcomes, not just installation. That is what lets us scale without compromising on performance.
The Homes Behind the award
Four projects from our submission show the range of homes we work on, from 19th-century farmhouses to defective-block remediation, and the results: a fabric-first approach.
| Project | The home | BER | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| EnerPHit Upgrade Glasnevin, Co. Dublin | 1910s semi-detached house | F A1 405 › 20.94 kWh/m²/yr | Upgraded to the EnerPHit standard, with overheating hours cut from 9% to about 1% |
| Re-imagined Farmhouse Co. Tipperary · Traditional Homes Pilot | 19th-century farmhouse | E1 A3 338.09 › 46.07 kWh/m²/yr | Breathable cork-lime and Diathonite insulation, preserving the home’s heritage character |
| Deep Retrofit of Traditional Dwelling Co. Westmeath · Traditional Homes Pilot | Detached farmhouse, c. 1900, 278 m² | A1 21.63 kWh/m²/yr primary energy | Airtightness of 0.15 air changes per hour and CO₂ emissions of 2.77 kg/m²/yr |
| Defective Concrete Block Home Co. Mayo · Defective Concrete Block Scheme | 1995 semi-detached house, 167 m² | A1 −12.45 kWh/m²/yr primary energy | Net energy-positive home after full structural remediation and deep retrofit |
Glasnevin shows that a traditional Dublin home can reach world-leading Passive House performance. Natural, breathable hemp and woodfibre insulation protect the old masonry, around 405 linear metres of junctions were detailed to remove thermal bridges, and passive cooling cut the hours above 25°C from 9% to about 1%.
Tipperary was delivered under the SEAI Traditional Homes Pilot with the farmhouse's seventh-generation owners, architect Caelan Bristow and contractor Sancrest Construction. Cork-lime and Diathonite insulation kept the original walls breathable, while a new extension was designed to sit naturally beside the old house.
Westmeath, also a Traditional Homes Pilot, kept sections of its original stone walls and still reached an infiltration rate of just 0.15 air changes per hour. Its annual CO₂ emissions are only 2.77 kg/m².
Mayo combined full structural remediation of a defective concrete block home with a deep energy retrofit. With airtightness of 0.20–0.23 air changes per hour, heat recovery of up to 88% and on-site renewables, the house now produces more energy than it uses, with delivered energy of −1,187 kWh a year.
Together they make a simple point: whatever the age, condition or character of an Irish home, it can be made warm, healthy and close to zero carbon.
Chair’s Award: Caroline Ashe Brady
We are especially delighted that Caroline Ashe Brady received the Chair's Award for Outstanding Contribution to Sustainable Energy, one of the most coveted honours of the night.
As Commercial & Sustainability Director of KORE Caroline has helped drive the company's growth while championing energy-efficient building, sustainable retrofit and industry best practice. She is a certified Passive House Consultant and Chairperson of the Passive House Association of Ireland.
Beyond the technical, Caroline has been a consistent voice for collaboration, innovation and greater diversity across the construction industry. This award recognises a career spent raising the bar, not just for KORE, but for the sector as a whole. Congratulations, Caroline.
What comes next
These awards are a milestone, not a finish line. We will keep pushing what retrofit can deliver, through our everyday projects and our work with academia, industry and European research initiatives such as Circular Reno and AREC Reno, advancing best practice in indoor air quality, building performance and sustainable construction.
Our thanks go to SEAI and the judging panel, to our homeowners for opening their doors to us, and to the architects, contractors and suppliers who share our standards. Most of all, thank you to the KORE team, whose care on every site made these results possible.
Thinking about upgrading your home? Get in touch with KORE Retrofit to find out how our One Stop Shop can take you from assessment to an A-rated home, with the grants handled for you.