COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

South Dublin County Council Crest

MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

Monday, April 14, 2025

QUESTION NO. 34

QUESTION: Councillor Joanna Tuffy

To ask the Chief Executive to report on any funding it has applied for since January 2023 to the European Union under its programmes aimed at the Environment and Climate Change. Report to include any plans the Environment, Water and Climate Change department of the Council has to explore applying for funding or resources under current programmes e.g LIFE Programme.

REPLY:

The South Dublin County Council actively examines all avenues of collaboration and funding sources to help improve and expand delivery of services through research and innovation. To this end the council has utilised a number of EU funding programmes including Horizon 2020, Interreg Europe, Interreg NEW, and LIFE, to develop climate related programmes to assist the council achieve its climate action targets, whilst sharing our learnings to the wider community.

Previous projects most notable included

The project promoted the roll-out of advanced form of district heating (DH), known as 4th Generation District Heating and Cooling, across North-West Europe. South Dublin County Council successfully delivered the Tallaght District heating system through supports from Interreg. Trading as Heatworks, Ireland’s first publicly owned, not-for-profit energy company, is now providing low-carbon heat to public buildings in the area. The network uses excess heat from Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) data centre to provide low carbon heat to the network customers. The development of this innovative, low-carbon initiative was led by SDCC with the assistance of its energy agency, Codema.

The aim of the project is to improve water quality of urban streams and rivers by resolving pollution from domestic misconnections.  The project uses a combination of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) desktop mapping, Apps and field data collected by project staff to find houses most likely to have a misconnection. The project provided for the construction of integrated constructed wetlands to treated polluted storm water before it enters local rivers. The project is in the final reporting phase and was a collaboration between South Dublin County Council as project lead, Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, and the EU LIFE Programme.

The following is a list of EU funded projects and studies which South Dublin County Council are currently delivering   

This is an Interreg NWE funded project. The overall aim of the project is to look at the pathways to extended existing district heating systems to the residential sector and how this can be achieved with multiple stakeholders. Codema and South Dublin are full partners in the project, and we will use the Tallaght District heating scheme as the pilot to assess the economic, technical and social options for extending the network. There are opportunities for site visit to the European partners and to learn from more experienced EU countries about extending district heating networks.

This is a Horizon2020 funded project that aims to establish a project implementation unit (PIU) within Codema. The PIU allows for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects to be developed and procured in a much more efficient manner, and also to be amalgamated into larger parcels to aid procurement and investment. These projects will use the energy performance contracting (EPC) method in order to, both ensure high quality and monitored works, but also leverage investment from the private sector. These types of contracts also offer substantially bigger energy and euro savings compared to traditional contracts. Between the four Dublin local authorities and four ‘Mid East’ local authorities (Kildare, Meath, Louth and Wicklow), there is a project pipeline of €20.4m. South Dublin County Council are a partner along with the three other Dublin local authorities, with Codema as the lead partner. At present there is several SDCC buildings in the procurement stage for energy and renewable works using the EPC method.

This is an Interreg Europe funded project, with Codema as a full partner and South Dublin County Council as an associate partner. The 2023 Energy Efficiency Directive (2023 EED) integrates the concept of Energy Efficiency First (EE1st). It requires policymakers to evaluate benefits of reducing energy consumption, instead of focusing on supply-side resources (Renewables). With limited time to meet 2030 EU Green Deal targets, policy makers must encourage measures that limit energy production to what is needed and reduce/manage energy demand. Implementation of the EE1st principle is urgent, but not simple. The 2023 EED sets requirements for national level. Yet, there is also a role for regional and local policy makers. Local and regional authorities need long-term foresight mechanisms to implement EE1st in climate / green growth planning cycles. The overall aim is to improve delivery of a technical, business, community and organisational plan to achieve decarbonising zone goals, in coherence with the Energy Efficiency First (EE1st) principle. This will be tested in the Clondalkin decarbonising zone.

This is an Interreg NWE funded project. Space on rooftops can be used as a sustainable solution that increases resilience and improves the livelihood of its communities. We can distinguish several type of roofs: 'yellow roofs' produce renewable energy, 'green roofs' lower temperatures, add biodiversity and improve air quality; 'blue roofs' equip cities and water bodies to combat pollution and mitigate the effects of extreme weather; 'purple roofs' add space for living and working, 'red roofs' for meeting spaces and sports, 'orange roofs' for transportation; and 'grey roofs' for utilities. Combining functions create 'golden combinations', in which positive effects are amplified. The project will develop strategies, implement pilot actions in Dublin and deliver capacity building programs by developing (1) a digital twin tool for public authorities to determine what is desirable on rooftops, (2) approaches to identify property owners that are susceptible to utilise their roofs multifunctionally and (3) financial incentives to influence property owners to utilise their rooftops multifunctionally.