Looking to live a more sustainable, efficient lifestyle? Check out this recent study that revealed the best places to live off-grid in Ireland.
Maybe you want to escape the hustle and bustle of city life, or maybe you seek a more sustainable, efficient lifestyle at odds with mass consumerism. Either way, off-grid living could be for you.
It can be difficult to know where to begin, so Calor have conducted a study to reveal the best places to live off-grid in Ireland.
Living off-grid – a self-sustainable, efficient lifestyle
Traditionally, living off-grid means to live without typical connections to public utilities like electrical lines, gas, water, and sewer systems. However, today it has become synonymous with a self-sustainable, efficient, and minimalist lifestyle.
Gas giants Calor – no, not Jupiter and Saturn – studied various factors that affect off-grid living.
They considered square metres of per population, hours of sunlight, property prices, land availability, local produce markets, and the quality of natural amenities to determine the best places to live off-grid in Ireland.
The best place to live off-grid in Ireland – County Mayo
Calor’s research concluded that County Mayo is the best place to live off-grid in Ireland.
Mayo is Ireland’s third-largest county by area but only 18th in terms of population, so it boasts a large volume of land per capita.
Moreover, Calor found that Mayo had very competitive housing prices and the greatest amount of land for sale per capita in the country.
Add this to “one of the best natural amenity scores in the country” and it’s easy to see why Calor rated Mayo the best place to live off-grid in Ireland.
The rest of the list – west is best
Thanks to space per capita, hours of sunlight, low property prices, and abundant natural amenities, County Leitrim came second on Calor’s list.
With the most space per capita in the study, lots of sunlight, and plentiful natural resources, County Kerry claimed the third spot.
Meanwhile, Donegal and Roscommon rounded off the top five, highlighting that the west of the country is the best place to live off-grid in Ireland.
Unsurprisingly, Dubin ranked last on the list thanks to “dense urban development and limited available land”. Calor does, however, point to suburban Dublin areas like Malahide as places in the county where off-grid living is possible.
County Meath’s proximity to the capital has seen its population spike due to rising rent prices in Dublin. This adversely affected Meath’s score in Calor’s study, with the county also falling into the bottom five.
However, the study highlights the County Meath towns of Kells and Trim as ideal places for off-grid living due to their ample green spaces.
