Compiled by JOHN REYNOLDS
Energy R&D facility at heart of tSli Ghlas
AN ALLIANCE that includes Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), Dublin City University and Dublin Airport Authority aims to develop an IFSC-type zone for cleantech innovation and green businesses on a site beside Dublin Airport.
The project – known as the Green Way (or An tSlí Ghlas) – includes an international cleantech services centre (ICSC), designed to house foreign and indigenous SMEs and multinational companies that invent, research, develop and sell emerging cleantech products and services.
DIT, in collaboration with the University of Houston, Texas, is working to establish an energy product innovation centre, a custom-designed R&D facility in a location which is easily accessible for visiting clients and researchers.
It is understood that the alliance has held initial talks with an Asian investment consortium in relation to financing the scheme, with a view to attracting their universities and companies. The cost is likely to run into hundreds of millions of euros, although the alliance did not reveal a figure.
With a planned location on the current site of the Aer Lingus headquarters, the ICSC, the alliance believes, could include up to 250,000sq m of exhibition and conference space plus office, education and R&D facilities, and support up to 10,000 jobs.
The scheme would include rainwater harvesting features, conservation and biodiversity zones, the latest LED interior and street lighting, green roof systems, renewable energy sources and systems to minimse waste.
Its construction, which would be completed in several phases over 10 years, would incorporate the latest eco-design features, along with recycled, sustainable and energy efficient materials.
Tony Boyle, chairman of the An tSlí Ghlas steering committee said: “We wish to create an internationally recognised green economic zone.
“This project, which builds on our existing assets and infrastructure, can assist in the transformation of our economy.”
Singapore is embarking on a similar cleantech park initiative, on a 50-hectare site. Its first phase is expected to be completed in 2018, with total completion by 2030.
Boost for smart grid on the block
EIGHT years of R&D are starting to pay off for FMC Tech, a Shannon-based company whose smart grid technology has won backing from US industrial giant GE.
The Irish companys electricity network management technology is a system of software and sensors that helps to locate outages and detect faults before they occur in power lines. It is of interest to GE as it aims to supply technologies that will be crucial to the next generation of electricity grids around the world.
FMC Tech is one of 12 companies – out of the 4,000 that entered the GE Ecomagination Challenge – that is set to receive a share of a €42 million investment fund.
There is also the potential for further investment from Foundation Capital and RockPort Capital, two venture capital firms whose partners helped to evaluate the investee companies.
FMC Tech has previously received investment from Enterprise Ireland, Enterprise Equity and the Western Development Commission.
The firm’s managing director Mike McCormack said: “This new partnership is an important endorsement, and reflects the enormous interest in the US and globally in smart power grid systems. GE’s Ecomagination Challenge provides us with the perfect partnership opportunity to take our technology to the next level.”
A clear solution
A US START-UP, which has only recently spoken publicly about its technology, claims that it can help the US government reduce the costs of converting nuclear waste to glass.
California-based Kurion says it has devised a method of modularising this conversion method, known as vitrification – the generally accepted way of dealing with nuclear waste – making it cheaper, faster and more efficient.
The technology has been two years in development, with only small-scale tests conducted so far, but the firm says it can be taken to nuclear waste tanks and applied there. This avoids the costly transport of waste to massive centralised treatment plants.
If successful, it will be bad new for US engineering giant Bechtel, currently building the world's largest vitrification-based treatment plant for the US Department of Energy at a cost of $12 billion.
Kurion claims it has also developed a better pre-treatment process, the first step in treating and handling the waste before it is turned into glass.
The company is continuing with longer-term trials and has signed a contract with engineering firm CH2MHill to test out its technology at the Washington plant site, on sludges containing uranium metal.
In brief
CHINA PLANS to invest up to €1.1 trillion in cleantech industries in the next five years
SHOPS THAT leave their doors open while the heating is on double their energy bills, Cambridge University researchers have found
MITSUBISHI POWER Systems is investing up to €122m in an offshore wind RD centre in Scotland
A FORMER airfield in Buckinghamshire will become the UKs first solar energy park
IRISHMAN MARTIN McAdams wave energy firm Aquamarine Power has raised £11m in new financing
SIEMENS HAS successfully tested a carbon capture and storage plant in Germany
UK SUPERMARKET Asda plans to trial a liquid detergent dispenser in a bid to reduce packaging waste
DESPITE THE recession in the West global CO2 emissions fell by just 1.3 per cent last year
GENERAL MOTORS plans to invest $40m in carbon offset projects
SAINSBURYS IN the UK is looking to turn its new shops into off-grid community clean energy hubs
VIETNAM PLANS to develop new nuclear, wind, biomass and hydroelectric energy sources by 2020
43 CHINESE cleantech companies have raised $5.4bn to date on little-known stock exchange ChiNext
CONSUMER GOODS giant Unilever has set a 10-year goal to halve its products’ environmental impact
JANUARY 2011 17-20: World Future Energy Summit 2011, Abu Dhabi; worldfutureenergysummit.com
