Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 12 March 2019
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Coillte: Chairperson Designate
Ms Bernie Gray:
Yes. The best thing for any economy to have is a diversity of energy sources for energy production. Biomass is one of them. Coillte is looking at the issue of combined heat and power, CHP, as part of the potential reinvestment in its processing plants in Smartply and Medite but it is an expensive technology and we have to be confident that in making that investment, it delivers a return with which our shareholder is happy.
We are only in the process of assessing those potential investment options in CHP within our own plants, using biomass.