Shannon in line for €85m green project

A MAYO business man met with Shannon area councillors last week, discussing his proposal for an €85 million green energy facility in the town, which he says has the potential to deliver a massive economic boost.
Shannon is the favoured location for Sean Daly of Carbon Sole Energy for an €85m combined heat and power (CHP) facility and he says the town was only selected after much thought.
“We did an assessment over the last three years looking at locations all along the west coast. Generally, our starting point was where there were concentrations of forestry, potential for supply and potential to increase supply also. We were looking to Mayo originally but the gas is coming into every town there. We looked at Limerick, which is the highest usage of heat in the area but one thing about Limerick is that it’s quite spread out and so are the industry sectors. We looked at county development plans and the Clare County Development plan is very definitive with respect to renewable and green energy. It covers everything from tidal to wind to biomass and you also had the Clare Limerick Energy Agency. There was an awful lot of available information and this is on top of reports from the Western Development Commission on fuel supply and biomass and so on. Then it came down to various towns in Clare and Shannon is laid out in a block form and it has quite a number of interesting groups around Shannon that want to see the area regenerated.”
A huge investment is needed to put the plant in place but he says it will generate a large amount of local revenue once it’s there. “It’s €85m for the facility and that doesn’t include the rolling out of the district heat network. Thereafter, we’re looking at a spend of approximately €20m in the region per year, between things like employment and fuel supply.
“There is the potential for this facility to be self-sustaining within 10 years. By good planting management, we would hope that within 10 years the plant would be fully supplied by people within 100 kms. That is the model that has been used in Sweden too.”
He says the facility could be operational within five years. “From once we get planning, we can have a facility fully operational within two years. We know the planning requirements but we would hope that within three years we’d have met all requirements.”
If the plant gets the go-ahead, it will provide a number of jobs directly. “Directly within the facility there will be 50 and with supply of the facility, things like forestry and haulage, another 150. The construction of the facility could be anywhere from 150 to 200.”
However, it should have a much larger knock-on effect, offering a lot of advantages for companies. “We have had meetings with the IDA and Enterprise Ireland because you need to perceive the facility as an anchor to attract other industry in. Any company that gets green heat from us has a zero carbon footprint compared to if they were burning gas or oil. Generally, all they’re doing is exchanging heat from our hot water into their heating requirements. It’s a win-win situation. We have assessed a number of company’s heat requirements and we know that we could facilitate between 20 and 30 quite large companies that would have the potential to employ over 1,000 people each. That’s on top of meeting the existing thermal heating requirements of industry and the residential area. It’s in preplanning that we will finetune this and we also have requirements from the department to get our green energy target and we have to maintain an efficiency requirement. We have to be able to distribute a minimum amount of our heat to meet our target.”
County Councillor Sean McLoughlin attended last Thursday’s meeting with Mr Daly and he said he was enthused by what he heard.
“Basically, it renewable energy and it would result in cheaper energy and heating around the area. It’s a good idea, it would be a new and clean type of energy. What I was most interested in is the jobs that it would provide, both directly and indirectly. Also farmers might be able to make money out o it by producing the crops that would be used for it. If it were to bring down the cost of energy it might encourage companies to come to Shannon and to create more jobs here.”
Independent town and county councillor, Patricia McCarthy was also positive about the proposals. “It was a very good presentation, very professional and very factual,” she commented.
Councillor McCarthy said she had visited a similar type of facility in Sweden.
She said all jobs created would be very welcome. “It would provide jobs in construction initially. The facility itself mightn’t be that labour intensive but it would have a spin-off effect and other businesses would benefit.”
Sinn Féin town councillor Cathy McCafferty said the proposal has potential. “It’s a very interesting project and I’d be very anxious to see it come to fruition. Sean Daly gave the presentation, he’s a young Mayo man and he’s very enthusiastic, he’s hoping to employ 50 people in two or three years’ time. The presentation was very technical and he was very enthusiastic,” she added.