Ballynagran Energy Plus Community

Ballynagran, County Wicklow

An ambitious project in Ballynagran, County Wicklow, is aiming to create the world’s first rural zero carbon district under a plan that would see it switch totally to green power, transport and production within 10 years.

An event was held in October 2010 to launch the plan and provide a platform for discussion with local residents. Speakers from Wicklow County Council, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, the Irish Cooperative Organisation Society, Wind Energy Direct and the Northern Ireland Housing Executive provided their expertise. Speakers from Roscommon and Germany gave their personal experiences from community renewable energy schemes they have been involved in. Presentations and details from this event are available on their website.

Up to six hundred and fifty households are included in the project inspired by the goal of completely eliminating emissions of carbon. They plan to start with simple measures like switching over every single light fitting to energy saving bulbs and carrying out energy audits on all homes, business premises and public buildings to see how they can be better insulated.

However, by 2020, they hope to have wind turbines, biomass energy production and solar panels supplying power, electric vehicles on every driveway, rainfall harvesting to save on water, community allotments and orchards for food production and possibly reopening the long abandoned Glenealy railway station to take advantage of the Dublin-Rosslare train.

Experiments with zero carbon communities are taking place around the world, but generally in new housing developments or existing urban neighbourhoods where residents live in close proximity and share utilities.

The Ballynagran Zero Twenty project takes in a circular area, 6km in diameter, with a mix of one-off houses, farms, a population concentration in Glenealy village, as well as dispersed clusters of new homes and older dwellings. It will be particularly challenging because of the rural nature of the area. Transport will be a big issue and farming, too, because agriculture is a big producer of methane.

Funding has been secured from Wicklow County Council in association with Greenstar Landfill levy. Ironically, the location for the project was decided by an operation once viewed as an environmental hazard. All the households are within a 3km radius of Ballynagran dump where operators, Greenstar, pay an annual levy into an environmental fund overseen by Wicklow County Council.

The first phase of the project will involve completing an energy audit of every home in the Study Area, retrofitting the local primary school with Passive House Standard materials and embarking on an intensive educational programme. This first year’s effort will provide a very sound basis for subsequent phases which will see the upgrading of homes and businesses to significantly reduce their energy consumption. It is foreseen that such works could be implemented by a Retrofitting Cooperative, owned and operated by the local community, providing sustainable ‘Green Collar’ employment.

The project also plans to use the home improvement grants scheme run by SEAI and to tap into EU funds once it gets off the ground.