Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 11 October 2022
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action
Retrofitting Schemes: Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland
Ms Margie McCarthy:
The Deputy mentioned data centres - I made a comment earlier about it being agnostic district heating. It is about finding the most cost-effective heat source in any particular zone. What we have done is identify zones where there is good heat density. The next step is to start to identify where the best heat sources are. That could be anything, for example, geothermal, biomass, heat pumps or industry waste heat like that from data centres. The Deputy mentioned, for example, that has been really effective in Tallaght. Already, we can see they are adopting thermal storage on that site, which allows for greater flexibility in the system. If we achieve district heating throughout the country and thermal storage within each of those energy hubs, we then start giving some flexibility back to the grid. All of that plays its part. As to the Deputy's question, we do recognise the issue around communications. Some of the fundamental-----
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