Supporting a Greener Croke Park

Deirdre Newell of ESBI speaks to EM about the work to make Croke Park a more energy efficient stadium

Cúl green is a joint initiative by ESB and the GAA which aims to create a carbon neutral Croke Park by maximising energy efficiency and minimising energy usage at the stadium itself and through promoting energy efficiency in the wider community. The overall objective is to make Ireland's most popular sporting venue carbon neutral by the end of 2009 by cutting its annual 4,500 tonnes carbon emissions output by more than two-thirds.

This is being achieved through a state of the art environmental improvement programme covering the stadium's electricity, waste and water management systems as well as a unique and innovative sustainability plan which extends to fans' and members' activities in reducing the environmental impact of their travel to and from the stadium.

This sustainability plan involves plans and clubs making environmental impact reduction pledges on www.culgreen.ieESB is assisting Croke Park in this very worthwhile initiative in a variety of ways including the provision of specialist expertise in environmental management. This expertise is being provided by Deirdre Newell of ESBI who has been working in Croke Park since last June. "It is better that I am based in Croke Park itself rather than back in my office in ESBI," Deirdre explains. "This allows me to see what the priorities are and gives me the informal contact with the operations team there that is so important in joint projects like this."

The project began with an energy audit which looked at Croke Park's use of electricity, gas and diesel fuel. Interestingly, the floodlights at the stadium are powered by diesel generators and other parts of the stadium can also be switched to the generators during major events. This is mainly because the floodlights were retrofitted to the stadium and the grid in the area and the infrastructure in the stadium itself would not support running them directly off the grid.

"You have to begin by accepting that all businesses produce carbon," says Deirdre. "They can't function without doing so. Therefore, the aim has to be to minimise its production through reducing energy consumption and maximising energy efficiency."

Energy management is key to achieving this. "We are working on the implementation of a building energy management system," she notes. "Croke Park is very vast and it would be almost impossible to physically turn off all the lights every night. The management system will allow for the pre-programming of lights to switch on and off when they are required depending on the to use energy when you need it."

Information is another essential requirement. "Before we started this project the only energy monitoring going on at the stadium was the ESB meter," Deirdre points out. "We are now putting in sub-meters in various locations around the stadium so we can identify the various peaks and troughs in energy usage in different areas of Croke Park."

Having cut her teeth on waste management systems in environmental consultancy following her graduation with a degree in civil engineering from NUIG in 1995, Deirdre joined ESBI in 1997 and has worked in the broad environmental management area ever since. "Every project is different and brings its own challenges," she says. "The Cúl Green project is particularly interesting in terms of its scope."

She is pleased with the progress made to date on the project and is looking forward to the future. "We have completed the implementation of the energy monitoring system and we are working on the energy management system," she says. "I would expect this to be complete by the end of March. We have also done quite extensive studies into the possibilities for renewable energy on the site. We looked at solar energy first but ruled this out because of the excessively long payback time."

In fact, the payback time associated with it was longer than the equipment itself would have lasted.

"We are looking at wind as well but the option of putting turbines on the roof is ruled out by the floodlights which were added later. The existing structure wouldn't support wind turbines as well as these", says Deirdre. "Putting up a large standalone turbine near the stadium is also inappropriate due to the urban setting. But we are still looking at the options. We have erected four wind monitoring stations around the site and we will look at the data from those before making a decision."

There is one other form of renewable energy which does hold promise, however. "We are looking at geothermal energy which would use the heat from underneath the pitch. There is a UCD student working here on a final year project to investigate the feasibility of this."

Finally, there is alternative energy. "Combined heat and power is also something to look at", she explains. "This is where the gas used for heating would also be used to generate electricity on the site. However, we have to be careful that we don't end up wasting heat or electricity just to generate the other."

Her stint at Croke Park will finish in March by which time she hopes substantial progress will have been made towards the project's main aim of making Croke Park a carbon neutral stadium. "We have made tremendous progress already and I am confident that we will achieve all of the aims of the Cúl Green project on schedule."

EM