COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

south dublin county council crest

MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

Monday, March 11, 2013

QUESTION NO. 19

QUESTION: Councillor D. Looney

To ask the Manager to give a report on works underway, planned, envisaged or considered to provide renewable energy resources in the County, with regard to wind power, hydroelectric, solar, geothermal, biofuels or otherwise; to state the nature of these works; and to make a statement on South Dublin County Council's policy on encouraging renewable energy in the County in the time ahead?

REPLY:

The Council has recently launched a Sustainable Energy Action Plan (SEAP) and this document is currently on public consultation until early April.  The SEAP focusses on energy use reduction and savings (efficiency measures) as well as renewable energy  resources and relates to the public and private sectors.  The SEAP also includes a series of actions in relation to renewable energy (RE). 

The first of the SEAP RE actions is the preparation of a Local Authority Renewable Energy Strategy (LARES) on which work has commenced.  LARES will specifically address wind, hydro, solar, geothermal, biofuels and otherwise in order to assist the County's contribution to the national renewable energy target of 16% by 2020. 

The second SEAP RE action relates to ongoing pilot renewable projects at a municipal level, which include solar thermal and pv, (County Arts Centre; Clondalkin Sports and Leisure Centre; Valahalla development) biomass-wood pellet (St, Marks Youth Centre), biogas- landfill gas recovery (Arthurstown) and geothermal- ground source heat pumps (Ballyroan Library and Valhalla developments). 

The third SEAP RE action relates to potential renewable energy projects at a commercial/institutional level, including hydro (potential for small scale schemes on the County's rivers) and wind (including potential in the County's Parks and on private lands).

The Councils policy is to encourage and support renewable energy related development at appropriate locations. This includes, for example, planning permission granted for a 4.5MW deep geothermal electricity generation facility at Greenogue in January 2011.