Minister ratifies power station retrofit

MINISTER for Communications, Marine & Natural Resources, Dermot Ahern, has approved a €368m investment by the ESB in an environmental retrofit project at the Moneypoint power station in Co Clare.

The move secures 270 jobs well into the future and ensures Ireland conforms to the new EU regulations on environmental pollution.

Moneypoint is coal-fired and is a high polluter by modern standards of power generating stations.

Under the strict new guidelines set down under the Kyoto Agreement Moneypoint would have been closed in 2008.

Work on the project will take three years to carry out and the contract will be sent out to international tender in the near future.

As a result of the investment the plant will be secure up until 2020.

ESB Group will provide the finance for the project, but it needed government clearance before it could proceed.

The coal-fired electricity generation plant has the capacity to meet almost 25% of the country’s daily electricity requirements.

It was built in the 1980s as part of a fuel diversity strategy which evolved following the 1970s oil crisis.

However, as environmental laws tightened and concern grew over environmental issues, the pressure from the EU has intensified and much tighter pollution controls were put in place to protect the world from global warning and to ensure the purity of the air we breathe.

To comply with the more stringent pollution guidelines laid down by the EU Moneypoint requires a serious upgrade to bring it into line with best practices and the tougher pollution control regime in operation in Europe.

To achieve that objective the plant has to have high quality equipment installed to cut down on the level of pollution currently being spewed into the atmosphere by the coal powered plant.

The project involves a retrofit of environmental equipment at Moneypoint costing €264 million.

In addition, there will be a substantial refurbishment of the plant costing €104m. The refurbishment will be carried out in tandem with the environmental installation and the aim is to have the project completed by January 2008 in line with EU Directive requirements.

In effect, the approval of the project secures the future of the plant well into the next decade.

Mr Ahern said the Moneypoint project would ensure that coal continued to be an important element of our electricity generation fuel mix and that our dependence on natural gas was kept at a sustainable level.

Last night a spokesman for the ESB said the group was extremely pleased with the Minister’s decision.

Fundamentally, the ESB said, this ensures the “diversity” of the fuels used to generate the nation’s power requirements.

“The ESB welcomes the government’s decision to approve the project which will ensure a mixed basket of fuels into the future and improve security of supply as a result of any crisis arising in any particular fuel market,” the spokesman said.