New IrBEA members – June 2016

We would like to welcome several new IrBEA members this month they include Biolectric Ireland in Dublin, CHP Mechanical in Co Down, both companies have taken up medium corporate membership. We would also like to welcome Derry Cronin from Fergus, Cork and Dragon Heat Ltd from Castledermot, Kildare who have joined as indivdual members. We look forward to their involvement and meeting up soon at forthcoming IrBEA events.

Open Public Consultation on Horizon 2020 Societal Challenge 2 Work Programme 2018-2020

Horizon 2020 reflects the policy priorities of the Europe 2020 strategy and addresses major concerns shared by citizens in Europe and elsewhere.The public consultation on Horizon 2020 – Food Security, Sustainable Agriculture and Forestry, Marine and Maritime and Inland Water Research and the Bioeconomy- Work Programme 2018-2020 is open from 06 June until 28 August. Details are found here http://ec.europa.eu/research/consultations/sc2-wp2018-2020/consultation_en.htm
The objective of Horizon 2020 Societal Challenge 2 is “to secure sufficient supplies of safe, healthy and high quality food and other bio-based products, by developing productive, sustainable and resource-efficient primary production systems, fostering related ecosystem services and the recovery of biological diversity, alongside competitive and low-carbon supply, processing and marketing chains. This will accelerate the transition to a sustainable European bioeconomy, bridging the gap between new technologies and their implementation”.
All citizens and organisations are welcome to contribute to this consultation. Contributions are particularly sought from civil society organisations, businesses, research institutions, policy makers, higher education institutions,science museums, science shops, scientific centres of excellence, local public authorities, cities of scientific culture, innovators and entrepreneurs.

New IrBEA website launched

IrBEA are pleased to announce the release of their new website at www.irbea.org, hope you like it. We intend to have the latest information and news from bioenergy industry. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions please send them to contact@irbea.ie.
Fuelled by interest from members we have included new functionality to our website called ‘Members Forum’, this gives one members the opportunity to upload information about their company and share recent business news and developments. We will offer a page of our website each month to any members who thinks this could be beneficial to their business. It may be a detailed report or case study relating to their business or it may be used to simply let other members know that they are a new member of IrBEA, the format it takes is very much under their control. We will charge a nominal fee of €250 for a 3 month slot, our staff will be on hand to help with any content technicalities. For more information ring Teresa at 086 1256709 or email membership@irbea.ie

Update from DCENR

IrBEA has received feedback from DCENR over the last 2 weeks, the department seemed genuinely interested in working  to ensure that the Bioenergy policy delivery is appropriate. It is still their intention to roll out RHI by early 2017. The timeline seems to be that there will be another consultation in late June. It will have three components: A questionnaire to related parties. Interviews with specific organisations (including IrBEA) and finally, select workshops. There will then be a final consultation early October, which will be focused both on the procedure for delivering the RHI and the technical content. Element Energy, from London has been appointed to carry out the economic review for RHI. That report is due back in September, in advance of the consultation. There will also be results out shortly on a biogas study which will feed into the consultation.

IrBEA meet with DAFM Climate Change & Bioenergy Policy Division

Biogas: IrBEA met with DAFM Climate Change and Bioenergy Policy Division. On Tuesday 12th April IrBEA’s Padraic O’Neil and Noel Gavigan responded to a request from Department of Agriculture Food and Marine officials to meet and discuss the options for biogas at an agricultural level. Over a wide ranging meeting the options and possibilities were discussed for implementing small scale biogas plants on farms and in agri-food facilities. Of particular interest was the potential to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions through reducing slurry storage and the displacement of fossil fuels for heat and power. The Department is interested in this potential and the discussion did include the possibilities for support measures.