A planning notice for the Dublin District Heating Project has been issued, opening a six-week period for public submissions on the long-promised scheme.
The project, meant to begin a decade ago, will take heat generated by burning household waste at the Dublin Waste to Energy (DWtE) plant, known as the Poolbeg incinerator, and pipe it to 50,000 homes and buildings in Dublin’s Docklands areas.
Dublin City Council said it hopes to begin work next year and have properties connected by 2028.
Works include a new tunnel to carry pipes under the Dodder river, linking Sir John Rogerson’s Quay with York Road in Ringsend.
A further 8.5km of underground pipes will be laid in residential areas of the north and south quays. Most of the other works will be on and around the DWtE site.
When complete, homes and businesses in the area will have radiator heat and hot water supplied by DWtE, replacing much of the gas or electricity now used.
District heating is common in many other European countries, where heat is generated at a central source and used to heat water that is then piped to surrounding properties.
Such systems have proved helpful in cutting carbon emissions, as only one heat source needs to be switched to renewable energy to decarbonise thousands of homes instead of attempting to switch each property individually.
Where the heat is generated as a byproduct of an industrial process, the sustainability gains are even greater.
District heating schemes could dramatically reduce Ireland’s energy bills
A smaller district heating scheme – the country’s first – has been operating in Tallaght since 2023.
It takes heat generated by an Amazon data centre and pipes it to the nearby offices of South Dublin County Council and the Tallaght campus of Technical University Dublin.
DWtE already uses some of its own heat to boil water that creates steam to generate electricity, but it has been envisaged as a district heating source since the early 2000s.
Some of the necessary pipeline, including a section running under the river Liffey linking the north and south quays, has been in place since 2010, long before DWtE belatedly began operating in 2017.
The revived scheme is designed to take hot water from DWtE and carry it through pipes just under a metre in diameter to taps and radiators in connected properties, and then back to DWtE.
The flow would be continuous, with heat added to the network as households demand, but backup systems would be maintained in case of disruption.
Dublin City Council says it hopes to carry out the advertised works and begin connecting the first customers in 2027-28.
Recently built apartments on the former Irish Glass Bottle site will benefit first, followed by developments and properties in the north and south Docklands areas.
Dublin City Council has issued the notice under what is called a Part 8 process, where the council essentially applies to itself, as the local planning authority, for permission to carry out the works.
However, An Coimisiún Pleanála may also have a role in determining the project’s progress as the public have four weeks, until October 7th, to apply to the planning board for a “screening determination” to assess whether there is likely to be a significant effect on the environment.
Dublin City Council says its own assessment is that “there is no real likelihood of significant effects on the development” and that it does not require a full environmental impact assessment report.
The city council will accept other kinds of observations and submissions directly in writing or through its online planning portal until October 21st.