Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 2 April 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment

Energy Plant Certification: Commission for the Regulation of Utilities

Mr. John Melvin:

The key difference related to the market conditions and the business plans of the promoters. In 2012, the promoter had a business plan that involved a low-cost fuel and a relatively low-efficiency dryer but that made economic sense because the fuel cost is low and the company can use a lot of it to make the finished product. That stacked up in 2012. For whatever reasons or perhaps as a result of market changes that took place in the mean time, the business case proposed in 2018 was different. It now stated that the plant would consume 70% of the high-value finished product and burn it. In giving the economic justification for that, the applicant demonstrated that at that price of fuel, if the alternative was a high-efficiency dryer, it made economic sense. We agreed that if the hypothetical alternative is a high-efficiency dryer, it makes economic sense but the big difference is that this high-efficiency dryer that demonstrated the economic sense uses less than a third of the fuel the machine on the ground uses.