Guinness Ireland has said the installation of a new combined heat and power plant at St James's Gate in Dublin will cut 10 per cent off electricity and 20 per cent off heating costs at the brewery.
The company said the new plant would also contribute significantly to an expected doubling of production at St James's Gate in the next few years.
The Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, yesterday opened the new plant which was developed by Gatepower - a joint venture between Bord Gais and Fingleton White & Co, engineer and project manager. None of the companies involved would provide a figure for the value of the contract.
Such plants operate by combusting natural gas and air to simultaneously generate electricity and heat.
In conventional electricity generation, up to 65 per cent of the initial primary energy input is wasted, whereas combined heat and power plants make it possible to recover the majority of this rejected heat for production use. The most suitable sites for such plants are hotels, hospitals, industrial processes and commercial buildings. The St James's Gate facility is the largest industrial combined heat and power unit in Ireland.
Mr Clive Brownlee, assistant managing director of Guinness Ireland, pointed out that the plant would power the whole brewery, although the ESB would continue to provide back-up electricity.
He added that Guinness would be able to sell excess electricity to the National Grid, although it was not clear what kind of revenue could be produced by doing this.
"A conventional power generating station consumes almost three times as much primary energy as a combined heat and power unit," he said.
He said the plant had "wider implications for the production capacity of the brewery which should increase significantly".
Mr Brownlee stated that the plant would also have important environmental benefits in terms of air quality, with carbon dioxide emissions reducing by 10,000 tonnes per year. "In layman's terms, it is the equivalent of one thousand electric fires being turned off for good."
A small number of workers who were employed in the old plant took early retirement, while others were deployed elsewhere in the company.
The company is following an industry trend, with a large number of Heineken breweries installing combined heat and power plants, for instance.
The chairman of Bord Gais, Dr Michael Conlon, said the company was already providing such plants for Dublin Civic Offices and in parts of Temple Bar.
The company is hoping to build a network of up to 150 combined heat and power plants around the State, although it will face competition from the ESB and Northern Ireland Electricity.
Ms O'Rourke said she would like to see more Irish companies use combined heat and power technology as it would help the State achieve its carbon dioxide targets under the Kyoto protocol.
Referring to the general sector, she said the Electricity Regulation Bill, which establishes an independent regulator, would come before the Dail for its first reading next week.
