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Energy Efficiency

Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 18 December 2018

Tuesday, 18 December 2018

Ceisteanna (55)

Eamon Ryan

Ceist:

55. Deputy Eamon Ryan asked the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the percentage of the heat available from a planned €40 million district heating system utilising heat from the Poolbeg incinerator that will be utilised; and the purposes for which this resource could be utilised for. [53168/18]

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Freagraí ó Béal (6 píosaí cainte)

The use of waste heat from the Poolbeg incinerator to heat parts of Dublin is a big practical project we could undertake that would benefit the economy and turn what is currently a waste resource into a precious one. I welcome the seeking of €20 million from the climate action fund, but I am keen to get the details of what is planned with this very welcome project. I presume it is part of a staged development whereby we will think far bigger and look at how all of the waste heat from the Poolbeg peninsula is used.

An application by Dublin City Council to capture heat from the waste heat generated at the Dublin waste to energy plant and pipe it into homes and businesses in the Poolbeg, Ringsend and Docklands area of Dublin was successful in being approved for up to €20 million of support from the climate action fund. I understand up to 90MW of waste heat is produced at the Dublin waste to energy plant that has the potential to heat the equivalent of 50,000 homes and would otherwise be released into the atmosphere. The proportion of this heat to be used as part of the district heating project will depend on the level of heat demand connected to the network and is expected to grow over the lifetime of the project. I have visited the plant and understand from the operators that the project also has the potential to double the energy efficiency of the plant.

The detailed validation of the project is under way. However, the project has the potential to significantly reduce carbon emissions.  The reduction has been estimated at over 30,000 tonnes of carbon over a ten-year period for the initial phases of the project. I should also mention a similar project in south County Dublin on a slightly smaller scale in the same group. I hope these two significant district heating projects will achieve their potential.

I very much welcome the project. I understand we are looking at the initial phase where it will connect to new housing and businesses in the docklands, including on the Irish Glass Bottle site and the new build commercial premises in the north inner city along the quays. That is all very welcome, but I am very keen that we be much more ambitious. There are some pipes in place that would allow us to extend the project further up the river to new developing areas, including the Heuston Park Quarter. We should be looking at a range of other developments. It will require the council's support but also that of the Government to install the piping needed to enable further connections to be made. The figure of 90MW of waste heat to which the Minister referred is not insignificant. We could go further if we were to connect to other power stations on the Poolbeg peninsula where there is waste heat going into the River Liffey. Are there plans to provide for that level of scaling up and to take a much more ambitious approach?

The climate action fund was an attempt to help bottom-up thinking to see what was possible. It is significant that two schemes which were successful were district heating schemes, the one in Dublin city with a figure of €20 million and the one in Tallaght in the area of South Dublin County Council with a figure of €4.5 million. It signals to me that there is potential in this area. When I was there, the city manager noted that they had already laid some pipes and had a network of several buildings that could be connected. They have done some homework to make this a possibility. I will look at the potential to further extend the number of schemes and would welcome new ideas in that regard. That is what the climate action fund is about and most of the initiatives are related to creating better frameworks that could be expanded further, of which clearly this is one.

That is true. We are retrofitting under the district heating scheme, but we should also look at every other industrial facility across the country to see where there is waste heat to see if we can trap it and use it. One of our biggest problems is less in the area of electrification than heat capture where we are furthest behind our targets. We will not meet them through the use of biomass alone. We must stop burning fossil fuel for heat. The district heating scheme is the key and obvious beneficiary. As welcome as the project is - 30,000 tonnes is not an insignificant saving in emissions - in the context of a 100 million tonne gap which we have to close, it is a drop in the ocean. We need to start to scale up our ambitions across a range of areas. While these two pilot projects are welcome, we should be looking at every industrial facility in the State to see where there is waste heat that we could use to facilitate industry and local communities and to think much bigger about the possibilities.

I agree. Ultimately, I must be conscious of the cost effectiveness of the different measures which must enter into the calculation. I think it is 50:50 in these cases, where the State is putting in half of the funds, while the other half is raised elsewhere. We must look at the cost effectiveness of this and any subsequent heating project. I presume this project had an edge because the piping necessary had already been fitted at design stage and retrofitting was not required. I am looking to ensure our standards and regulations will make it easier in the future, as well as developing feasible projects in the near term.

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