A CONTROVERSIAL planning proposal for a biomethane plant in Bruree, County Limerick, has been rejected by Limerick City and County Council.
CycleØ Limited IE – which builds, owns, and operates biomethane plants across Europe – filed planning requests with the local authoricy for a large-scale plant at Cappanihane in Bruree, near Morrissey’s Cross.
Over 400 submissions were made in relation to the plans with 333 of these formally objecting to the plant’s proposed location, the remainder showing their support for the project.
The Limerick Biogas Concern Group, which was set up to highlight concerns from the local community around the Bruree plans, warmly welcomed the news of the plant’s rejection.
“We want to be clear, our objection was never against anaerobic digestion technology itself, but the rather the unsuitability of this specific location,” the group said.
The group went on to say that “our goal has always been simple – to protect the health, safety, and character of our community, along with its surrounding wildlife and natural environment”.
The decision by Limerick City and County Council was made on the basis that the proposal “would materially affect and interfere with the character of the historic landscape associated with Glenbrook House, which is a protected structure, and its demesne”.
The proposal was also considered “prejudicial to public health and seriously injurious to the residential and environmental amenity of the area”, given the potential for odour arising from the storage, handling, and processing of organic material and digestate.
Concerns surrounding the impact the plant would have on the Lower River Shannon and River Fergus Estuaries, the absence of a comprehensive proposal for the surface water design, and ensuring traffic generated by the proposed development could be safely accommodated were also listed.
However, over 60 submissions showed strong support for the plant and attracted international attention with messages of support coming from as far as New Zealand, as well as closer to home in Wales.
A €100m investment was announced by CycleØ last October identifying four sites of interest including Limerick, Kildare, Galway, and Cavan.
The company has said the plants would produce a combined total output of 160GWh, enough to heat 12,000 Irish homes and contribute to the National Biomethane Strategy, producing 5.7TWh of indigenous biomethane by 2030.
