Ireland’s Most Energy-Efficient Counties Revealed
A building’s BER rating is one of the best predictors of how much it costs to keep that building running. An A‑rated premises is highly efficient, with features such as modern insulation, smart heating and lighting installed, purposefully engineered to keep energy bills at a minimum.
Small and medium business electricity rates averaged around 24.27 cents per kWh in the first half of 2025, and the typical Irish small business burns through 15,000-25,000 kWh a year. Your energy bill is one of the few major costs you can actually do something about, and the building you operate from plays a bigger role than most business owners realise.
So, we decided to find out where in Ireland businesses are best set up to keep those costs under control. We analysed 80,526 non-domestic building energy ratings published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO), covering commercial and public buildings across every county from 2009 to 2025.
Curious how your county ranks? Let’s take a look.
Ireland’s most energy-efficient counties include:
1. Kildare
Kildare takes the top spot, and it’s not even close. A full 7% of its commercial buildings are A-rated. That’s 235 out of 3,355 assessed. It makes sense when you look at what’s been built there. Kildare has quietly become Ireland’s home for modern, high-spec commercial development. In August 2025, planners approved a €3 billion data centre campus by Herbata along the M7 at Naas, with all six buildings designed around energy efficiency from the ground up. Add in the pharma and semiconductor facilities that have set up along the same corridor, and you have a county where new buildings are built to a standard the rest of Ireland is still catching up with.
2. Dublin, Meath & Westmeath
Three counties share second place, each with 5% of their commercial buildings A-rated – and each has a good reason for it.
County Dublin has the biggest pool of buildings of the three, with 296 out of 5,915 hitting an A rating. Years of large-scale commercial and logistics development across the county have left a modern, well-performing building stock in their wake.
Meath has 134 out of 2,672 buildings A-rated. The commuter belt effect is real here – logistics parks, business campuses, and office developments built to current standards have pushed the county’s average up. The new 21,000 sq ft Thrive Centre of Business Excellence, which opened at Navan’s IDA Business Park in September 2025, is the latest example of that momentum. If you’re a business owner in Navan, Ashbourne, or Dunshaughlin, your chances of finding a modern, low-cost-to-run commercial premises are better than almost anywhere else in Ireland.
Westmeath rounds out the group with 84 out of 1,684 buildings A-rated. In September 2025, Westmeath County Council signed contracts to retrofit its three biggest public buildings. These include Áras an Chontae in Mullingar, the Civic Centre in Athlone, and Athlone Regional Sports Centre.
3. Longford
Longford ranks third with 4.1% of its commercial buildings A-rated. In April 2024, Longford County Council received €793,822 under the EU Just Transition Fund to develop the Longford Enterprise and Energy Centre. Transforming an 1894 building in Longford Town into the county’s first co-working hub, with free energy upgrade advice built right in.
4. Laois
Laois rounds out the top five, with 4% (38 out of 944) buildings A-rated. The momentum here is real. In September 2025, Laois County Council signed a multi-million-euro Pathfinder funding agreement with the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) to deliver deep energy retrofits across the Midlands. Portlaoise was also designated Ireland’s first Low Carbon Town in 2019, with major investment going into LED street lighting and solar energy. For business owners across Laois, the local conditions are working in their favour, contributing to the county’s high positioning.
5. Cork
The Rebel County rounds out the top five with 4% of its commercial buildings A-rated. That’s 291 out of 7,263 assessed, which is worth putting in context. Cork has more commercial buildings in this dataset than any county outside Dublin. Cork is one of Ireland’s biggest business counties for a reason. Pharma, tech, and manufacturing companies have all set up there.
The counties that don’t make the mark
Limerick City has the highest proportion of G-rated commercial buildings in the country at 17%. That’s the worst rate anywhere in Ireland.
Kilkenny and Sligo aren’t far behind, both sitting at 16%. Louth and Monaghan follow at 14%, with Wexford, Laois, Galway City, Waterford County, and Roscommon all at 13%.
Kilkenny is full of older heritage buildings that are tough to retrofit. Monaghan is heavy on agri-food and industrial units that cost a fortune to heat. Louth has many older warehouses running along the Dublin-Belfast corridor. And Limerick City has a lot of commercial buildings that were put up long before anyone was thinking about energy efficiency. For the businesses in those buildings, that G rating isn’t just a bad score. It’s money out the door every single month.
What this means for your business
You can’t always change the building you’re in, but you can make sure you’re not overpaying for the energy it uses. That’s exactly what Procure.ie does. We work with over 25,000 businesses across Ireland, comparing suppliers and negotiating the lowest rates on business electricity and business gas so you never pay more than you have to.
Whatever the BER on your wall says, Procure.ie can help make sure your energy bill doesn’t say more than it has to.
Methodology
We analysed 80,526 non-domestic BER audits by county, published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO), covering everything from offices and warehouses to hotels, schools, hospitals and shops across Ireland between 2009 and 2025, to find out which counties are the most energy efficient.
