The GAA has applied for planning permission to open a solar farm with a view to supplying all of Croke Park’s energy needs as well as the possibility of sufficient surplus to apply to other locations belonging to the association.
According to stadium and commercial director Peter McKenna, the proposed farm is located in Naul, north county Dublin, where Croke Park’s turf farm, which supplies the stadium with replacement grass surfacing, is also situated.
“We’re working with Amarenco [Cork-based renewable energy company] to set up a solar farm there. So we’re looking for planning permission for a facility that will generate 12 megawatts, which if permission is granted would make us energy self-reliant.
“It’s too far away to feed Croke Park directly but what we’re going to do is feed the grid and be able to account for that in the running of the stadium, which on big match days uses two megawatts, so depending on how the permission goes, we could also be able to account for other venues.”
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The move comes as the EU gets ready in three years for the introduction of a directive to tighten regulations on what can and cannot be described as carbon neutral and eco-friendly.
According to one of the framers of the directive in the European Parliament, the intention is “to clear the chaos of environmental claims”. Concerns had been growing about the vague and largely unregulated claims of phrases such as “climate neutral”, based on emissions offsetting.
The GAA intend to conform to the highest, revised standard.
“We’re looking to move early on this,” says McKenna. “It’s going to be law in 2026 and we want to give a sense of what we’re doing in Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions.”
Scopes 1, 2 and 3 are governed by the CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive), an updated categorisation of reporting emissions under the global standard Greenhouse Gas Protocol, broadly referring to 1) direct consumption of fossil fuels, 2) indirect consumption, such as the use of electricity to power things that don’t of themselves release emissions and 3), the carbon footprint of ancillary services and employees – or, more relevantly here, supporters – commuting.
Interviews were conducted with people attending matches this season in order to build up a picture of transport habits.
Croke Park in 2008 announced the intention to become carbon neutral but despite considerable progress, the standards applied are rising all the time, according to McKenna. For instance, at that stage no account was taken of embedded carbon in the building. Eventually the claim to be carbon neutral was dropped because of growing reservations about credibility.
“Definitions have become a lot more scientific and precise over the past 10 years. Overall there was a degree of greenwashing, not necessarily mischievous, but just not standing up to intensified scrutiny. Entitlement to claim for carbon neutrality has become stricter than what it would have been a decade ago – like some company buying a forest in Monaghan and claiming carbon neutrality. But that claim is not real. That forest was always there. You’re not taking additional carbon out.
“For example, we should – and will – be accounting for all the spectators who come to the stadium, whether by car or bus, whatever. It’s part of our carbon footprint. All of the food that we serve in the stadium has a footprint associated with it and we can’t say that’s for the caterers to deal with. We need to be more credible.
“Everyone felt that focusing on carbon as it was talked about 10 years ago is just not accurate at this stage. What we have done is focus on things we can do and that can be independently audited. That’s what we’ve done.”
Further issues that are currently being addressed include investigation of heat pumps to keep the pitch warm during the winter instead of relying on fossil-fuel heating.
“We’ve been zero to landfill for seven or eight years,” says McKenna. “On the water we use, this year we are going to introduce water harvesting tanks and they should be up and running by January. We hope to be able to irrigate the pitch from this, which would take a massive amount of [mains] water out of our usage.
“The purpose of all this is to show that our sustainability journey is real and we’re making good progress.”
