Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

That is true. We are retrofitting under the district heating scheme, but we should also look at every other industrial facility across the country to see where there is waste heat to see if we can trap it and use it. One of our biggest problems is less in the area of electrification than heat capture where we are furthest behind our targets. We will not meet them through the use of biomass alone. We must stop burning fossil fuel for heat. The district heating scheme is the key and obvious beneficiary. As welcome as the project is - 30,000 tons is not an insignificant saving in emissions - in the context of a 100 million ton gap which we have to close, it is a drop in the ocean. We need to start to scale up our ambitions across a range of areas. While these two pilot projects are welcome, we should be looking at every industrial facility in the State to see where there is waste heat that we could use to facilitate industry and local communities and to think much bigger about the possibilities.

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