Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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Question 27: To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the action he is taking to promote the building of new combined heat and power plants here; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [24178/09]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)
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Combined Heat and Power (or CHP) is a set of technologies which allows for both the generation of electricity and the use of heat released from the same process, thereby dramatically increasing the efficiency of the system. As such, CHP can make a valuable contribution to reducing energy costs to industry, and to reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions, particularly if the fuel source used is renewable, as in the case of biomass or biogas released from anaerobic digestion.

My Department currently has a number of programmes aimed at supporting the use of CHP. Perhaps the single most important of these relates to the CHP Deployment Programme, currently operated by Sustainable Energy Ireland. This programme provides information and support to those investigating the use of CHP of all kinds, including financial support for feasibility studies. Capital support is available to those installing Biomass fired CHP plants, or CHP plants based on Anaerobic Digestion (or AD), or small scale fossil powered CHP plants. Anaerobic Digestion involves the processing of plant or animal by-products in digesters, allowing the material to breakdown and release methane, which can then be burned in a CHP plant.

Since the capital support element of the CHP Programme opened, 80 applications have been received, with 58 approved to a total commitment value of nearly €5m. Based on all approved projects the installed capacity of the Capital Investment projects will be 14,562 kW of electricity and 19,937 kW thermal - representing a potential saving of 25,254 tonnes of CO2 per year and annual displaced grid electricity of 77 GWh. The projects installed to date have a combined capacity of nearly 8MW electrical and almost 12MW of thermal energy, and have drawn down over €1.6m in funding. To date 4 grant applications have been made for Biomass CHP, of which 3 were received in the last couple of months. One application has also been received for an AD CHP plant. Of the 4 Biomass applications, 1 has been approved in Co. Cork (to a value of 1.3 million). This project is currently under construction.

My Department is also in regular contact with the CHP group that exists within IBEC, and directly with the industry, in order to ensure that policy in this regard reflects the needs of industry.