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Financing Sustainability – Northern Ireland

Financing Sustainability – Northern Ireland

There are commercial benefits of integrating ESG considerations into business strategies: cost savings and reductions, attraction and retention of talented employees, mitigating risk and securing investment.

This page lists some of the financial supports, incentives and funding available to organisations in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors for sustainability-related projects in Northern Ireland.

NISEP

InvestNI

InvestNI, the regional business development agency for Northern Ireland, offers support across a wide variety of areas to help compete successfully and function efficiently. It also supports businesses to help reduce energy consumption and decarbonise their activities, contributing to achieving local and national government net zero energy by 2050 target.

Discover more about how it empowers NI businesses to fully optimise the opportunities emerging in the Green Economy and the global drive to net zero, and its supports for businesses to save energy and reduce resource consumption.

Sustainability Reports

All Northern Ireland businesses with an annual energy and resource spend of more than £30k can avail of this support which helps you to measure, monitor and report on your environmental impacts, demonstrating transparency and accountability.

Technical Consultancy

Available to all businesses with an annual energy and resource spend in excess of £30k, this support will allow you to make informed decisions on potential investments in energy efficiency – and ultimately save on business energy and reduce business costs.

Resource Matching

This service offers opportunities to convert redundant materials of one business into a resource for another – both adding value and reducing business costs for all parties. It allows businesses to prolong the life of resources while reducing their carbon footprint.

Energy Efficiency Capital Grant

The Energy Efficiency Capital Grant (EECG) will help Northern Ireland businesses reduce energy costs and build resilience through green efficiency.

Additional InvestNI resources

Adapt your business to climate change

A guide from nibusinessinfo.co.uk, Adapt your business to climate change, explains why businesses need to adapt to climate change, what the risks can be, how to change business priorities in response to climate change, and what other businesses are doing to reduce their carbon footprint in Northern Ireland. The site nibusinessinfo.co.uk is a free service offered by InvestNI and is the official online channel for business advice and guidance in Northern Ireland.

Community Finance Ireland

Community Finance Ireland is a dedicated social finance provider across Ireland and the UK. A charity and a social enterprise operating across the entire island of Ireland, it aims to “create a world-class community finance system that works tirelessly towards ensuring that positive social impact is felt – not just dreamt”. For more, visit its website.

Green loans

Banks are offering loans to help business. Ulster Bank is offering ‘green loans’ to help eligible UK businesses finance business assets to support eligible sustainability projects. These can include solar panels, electric vehicles, or heat pumps on commercial buildings.

NISEP

The Northern Ireland Sustainable Energy Programme (NISEP) makes funding available for energy efficiency schemes. This is an £8 million fund, collected from both domestic and commercial electricity customers through a public service obligation (PSO). Eligible schemes are listed each year. Following discussions with the Department for the Economy, NISEP will be extended from April 2025 to March 2027.

Age at Work

Age at Work is a programme that provides access to toolkits, networks, and support to unlock benefits for businesses and employees. Age at Work aims to support businesses to be more age-inclusive in their approach to retaining, retraining, and recruiting older workers, raise awareness of the need for an age-inclusive agenda in government, business and wider society and support mature workers to remain in or return to work.