Planning permission is being sought for a new gas-fired power plant in Co Limerick to tackle looming electricity shortages over the next decade.
Kilshane Energy has lodged the application with Limerick County Council for the €150 million plant which would have the capacity to generate 293 megawatts of electricity.
The company already has a planning application in place for a plant with the same specifications in Fingal in Dublin.
It resubmitted plans for the Fingal plant in September after Fingal County Council last year rejected an application on the grounds Kilshane did not assure planners the plant would not affect the environment or aircraft using nearby Dublin Airport.
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Of the Fingal plans, a spokesman for the company said: “We resubmitted in September. They made a request for further information last week or the week before Christmas, so that’s in the planning process at Fingal.” He said the company is “considering a number” of plants currently.
Minister for the Environment Eamon Ryan laid out a policy in 2021 to build an extra two gigawatts (GW) of power generation from gas in the next decade to supplement the transition to renewables as the mainstay of Ireland’s energy.
The gas-fired plants are designed to supplement and act as backup for wind energy, and although they are powered by fossil fuels, they emit far fewer greenhouse gases than existing coal and other fossil fuel plants.
Kilshane Energy, backed by Belfast businessman Stuart Draffin, has applied to build the Limerick plant on lands at Luddenmore, Luddenbeg and Inch St Laurence South townlands, Ballyneety.
“This isn’t a plant that’s dedicated to the use of heating homes,” said the spokesman. “These are called peaking plants, and there are a number of them under discussion.
“These are plants that will be on standby and will kick in for a half an hour or an hour or two hours and will be on call as required when Eirgrid has a bottleneck in an area.
“Because renewable sources like wind and solar are weather dependent, their availability is intermittent. It is imperative therefore, to have a backup electricity generation source that is dependable, consistent, and immediately available.
“This is referred to as dispatchable power. By using open cycle gas turbine technology, which is capable of starting up at extremely short notice, the Kilshane facility will be able to respond, within minutes, to EirGrid requests for dispatchable peak power generation.
“The facility can address unexpected fluctuations in the power grid and reduce the risk of electricity blackouts. The flexibility it offers will allow more renewable generation to be deployed on to the national grid and also help to retire older, more carbon-intensive power plants.”
He added that one of the plants would deliver almost 15 per cent of the additional 2GWs of flexible gas fired power plants which Mr Ryan identified in 2021 as being necessary to address the security of electricity supply concerns over the next five to ten years, particularly in Dublin.
