Niall Collins (Limerick West, Fianna Fail)
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Question 515: To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources his plans to reintroduce a grant scheme for the combined heat and power deployment programme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37320/09]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)
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The Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Deployment Programme, currently operated by Sustainable Energy Ireland (SEI) provides information and support to those interested in pursuing the use of CHP, 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 approvals to date, amounting 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 few months. One application has also been received for an AD CHP plant. Of the 4 Biomass applications, 1 has been approved in County Cork (to a value of 1.3 million). This project is currently under construction.

My Department and SEI is also in regular contact with the IBEC CHP Group and directly with individuals in the CHP industry. Decisions in relation to funding for CHP Programmes in 2010 will be subject to the Estimates process.