HEAT

eaga Ireland are pleased to announce the appointment of a new managing director to lead its operations in Ireland and to oversee continuing expansion opportunities.

Richard Rodgers, 44, was previously with Belfast-based Phoenix Natural Gas, where he helped develop the business from a customer base of zero to 120,000 in just 11 years.

In the newly created role he will be responsible for a division of the company with around 290 staff and annual revenues of £40 million.

In Northern Ireland eaga manages the Warm Homes Scheme, which provides heating and insulation grants for households on qualifying benefits on behalf of the Assembly Government.

It also owns HEAT, a Belfast-based subsidiary which specialises in the design, installation and maintenance of domestic central heating in the social housing sector in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. HEAT currently installs more than 5,000 heating systems and carries out in excess of 90,000 services each year.

Richard said: “With eaga’s core skills and capacity to deliver large scale domestic energy efficiency improvements there is huge scope for growth in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland”. Operating in both the public and private sector eaga is providing sustainable solutions which address environmental threats such as climate change and social justice issues such as fuel poverty.

“The need to protect the environment in tandem with helping vulnerable households to heat their homes affordably has clearly never been greater. These challenges are well understood across the whole island of Ireland and while eaga has been leading efforts to tackle them in Great Britain and Northern Ireland for the past 18 years, I believe there are clear opportunities to do the same in the Republic of Ireland. It’s certainly an exciting time to be with eaga.”

John Clough MBE, eaga Chief Executive, added: “As well as working for Phoenix Natural Gas, Richard has also worked with British Gas and Scottish Gas. He has more than 20 years experience of the energy sector and his knowledge of the sector will prove extremely useful as we continue to grow our business. I’m delighted to welcome him on board.”

Richard lives in Newcastle, County Down, and has two daughters, Jana, 13 and Nadia, 11.

Richard is a member of the Northern Ireland Committee of the Institute of Directors and also the Northern Ireland Fuel Poverty Advisory Group. Away from work he is passionate about endurance running, and has competed internationally for Northern Ireland more than 40 times. In 2005, he also ran for the Republic of Ireland in New Zealand in the World Mountain Racing Championships.

Based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, eaga plc is a FTSE 250 company. It has more than 4,000 employees based in operations across the UK, Ireland, Canada and India.

eaga plc is the UK’s largest residential energy efficiency provider. The company is a leader in the provision of innovative and sustainable services, products and solutions that address the environmental, social and energy efficiency objectives of Government and the private sector both nationally and internationally.
Working in partnership with central and local government eaga is positioned at the heart of policy-making and front-end delivery of social and environmental improvement programmes. eaga operates across the UK and in the Republic of Ireland, India and Canada employing over 3,500 people.
eaga was established in Newcastle in 1990 to lead government funded efforts to improve the living conditions of vulnerable people living in cold, damp and energy inefficient homes across England. Since its inception, eaga has made a positive difference to over 5 million disadvantaged households across the UK, by installing energy efficiency measures and central heating.
eaga holds the contract to deliver the £1.5 billion Warm Front programme in England, the cornerstone of government's target to eliminate fuel poverty by installing energy efficiency measures in vulnerable homes by 2010. eaga also works with devolved nation governments to deliver similar schemes across the UK.
As a co-owned business, eaga is one of only a handful of UK organisations where every employee with over a year’s service is entitled to a share in the success of the business. eaga’s commitment to co-ownership is an integral part of the values that define the ethos of the business and what it means to be an eaga employee.
The Government has set targets for all local authorities to have all social rented homes meeting Decent Homes standards by 2010. This requires homes to be fit for habitation, in a reasonable state of repair, with reasonably modern facilities and services and a reasonable degree of thermal comfort.
Since 2000, eaga has invested over £3 million in the independent eaga Partnership Charitable Trust which funds research into solutions to fuel poverty.