With biogas, Tipperary is bridging the gap between fossil fuels and farming
Tipperary is leading the way in the adoption of established technology aimed at replacing fossil fuels, with benefits in the largely rural county for agriculture and the national energy grid.
As part of efforts to fight climate change, Tipperary County Council has selected the National Bioeconomy Campus, which is being developed at the former Lisheen lead and zinc mine outside Thurles, as its decarbonising zone.
The former mine, which shut down in 2015, has become a hub for renewable energy, with a windfarm already on site.
Despite some local objections, planning permission for several large anaerobic digesters has also been granted on the site to Kildare-based Nua Bioenergy.
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The digesters will break down up to 98,000 tonnes of silage, farmyard manure and other feedstock – including dairy production waste – annually. They will produce fertiliser and biomethane, which will be injected into the national gas grid to replace natural gas.
The site will also be home to a biomethane development office, part of the council’s Biomethane for Carbon and Community Project, which is supported by the Technological University of the Shannon, the Irish Bioeconomy Foundation and the Tipperary Energy Agency.
But climate-forward action in the county isn’t just confined to the Lisheen site.
Despite Tipperary having a number of major towns, the county is a predominantly rural one, with 58.5pc of the population living in rural areas. (The national average is 37.3pc.)
This presents the county council with a unique set of challenges, as it seeks to decarbonise itself and help the wider community, agriculture and other businesses do the same.
“We have a unique role,” said Clare Lee, Tipperary County Council’s climate action co-ordinator. “We’re on the ground. We’re closely connected to communities; to local businesses; to the elected representatives.
So, in terms of outreach, and co-ordination and trust, we have loads of different programmes and schemes under which we can offer and embed climate action.
“We’re also regulators. We have the planning authority, which decides on planning applications and sets out the policy under which applications are assessed, including for sustainable settlement and capital projects, urban regeneration, and renewable energy.
“Climate action is a huge aspect of the local authority service provision, so the embedding of that into what we do... All the different functions are really important.”
Since the introduction of its climate action plan in 2024, the council has established a property management service to oversee the reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions from council buildings.
Some of this involves simple actions, such as encouraging staff to turn off lights when they’re leaving a room and turn off monitors when they’re leaving for the evening or the weekend.
A bigger action on the council’s radar, however, is retrofitting all council buildings and facilities across the county to use less energy.
Tipperary County Council is the lead of a five-county regional programme to address retrofitting in local authority properties in Tipperary, Carlow, Kilkenny, Wexford and Waterford.
“The regional coordinator for that programme is based in Tipperary County Council, and she works with the five county councils and helps them identify what buildings should be retrofitted, which are the most prioritised, and the design process,” Ms Lee said.
“For local authorities, we have legal obligations to reduce our own emissions, like any big company or organisation, so that looks at fleet, buildings, our facilities, our property – things like leisure centres, county halls, libraries.
“Then all the different small vans and lorries, and emergency response vehicles, they all have to be decarbonised.”
The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) can provide funding to county councils to help them achieve this aim, making buildings like swimming pools and civic offices more energy efficient.
SEAI was allocated €61m to fund these upgrades under the Pathfinder Programme in 2024.
This project is set to get under way in 2026, with the council aiming for a 51pc reduction in their emissions by 2030, in line with national targets.
Tipperary County Council is targeting ambitious reductions in emissions across various sectors, both internally and within the wider county. Key goals in its climate action plan are a 75pc cut in emissions from energy use across the county, a 45pc cut from commercial and residential buildings, halving of transport emissions, business emissions down by 35pc and agriculture by 25pc.
Agriculture made up 49pc of Tipperary’s near 3,800 kilotonnes in climate emissions in the reference year of 2018, followed by residential (13.7pc), and transport (13.2pc). The council’s own activities accounted for just 0.2pc of CO2 equivalent emissions.
However, for a county whose emissions skew heavily towards agriculture, Tipperary’s CAP is light on detail in this area, with the council mainly relying on a goal to “facilitate, advocate for and support the agriculture sector in meeting their own emissions reductions targets and in achieving energy in agriculture, farm diversification and smart climate land-use for example, opportunities around the bio-economy.”
Among the measures included in the county’s Climate Action Plan are: the introduction of new active travel measures in towns and villages across the county to encourage walking and cycling over car use; the protection of the county’s waterways through nature-based solutions; and the setting of targets for the reduction of emissions.
The council faces a significant challenge in decarbonising its fleet of 250 vehicles, with no current funding stream available to local authorities to do this.
“As vehicles come to end of life, we will consider changing to an EV [electric vehicle], so that’s ongoing. And we have a number of EVs in the organisation now,” Ms Lee said.
It’s really good to see the benefits of it so far
The local authority is also investigating switching from diesel to hydrotreated vegetable oil biofuel.
To support climate-forward work in the community, the council administers the Community Climate Action Fund, which helps communities to address climate change in different ways.
In 2024, the council was allocated €750,000 in funding from the Department of the Environment, enabling them to fund 25 projects across the county that focused on biodiversity, renewable energy, community facilities upgrades and more.
Among the projects that received funding were the Loughtagalla Biodiversity Park in Thurles (€90,000), energy upgrades in Burncourt (€20,000), and the Knockanrawley Resource Centre’s community garden in Tipperary town (€24,771).
The Canon Hayes Recreation Centre, Clanwilliam Rugby Club, and Rockwell Rovers and Eire Óg Annacarty GAA clubs were all given funding to carry out energy upgrades at their facilities.
Ms Lee is adamant the council is performing well on the targets set out in its action plan.
“The staff in the council are engaged, they understand climate action and are interested, and it’s really good to see the benefits of it so far,” she said.