A plan which could see the former sugar beet factory in Carlow turned into a refinery producing biofuel was put forward at a conference in the town yesterday.
The conference, which was organised by the Green Party, heard Alan Banks, chief executive of Losonoco Biofuel Plant Operators, in Europe and the US, explain that it was feasible to convert the Carlow factory to have a role in producing fuel.
Irish biofuels expert Bernard Rice of Teagasc said the sugar plant could be used to refine sugar beet into ethanol.
Mr Rice said the early stages of production, such as the weighing, sampling and washing out of the sugar could be done in the existing factory.
An extra unit would have to be built to ferment and distil the raw sugar solution into biofuel ethanol, he told the delegates.
He also said that biofuels had the capacity to boost rural economies. and that was one of the reasons Teagasc, the agriculture and food development authority, was interested in biofuels.
"The fact is that traditional farmers are all struggling, so farmers do need alternative outlets. In addition to sugar beet, which could be used at the Carlow sugar refinery, vegetable oil, straw and woodchippings are among the materials which can be used as biofuels," he said.
Mary White, deputy leader of the Green Party, who is also a local councillor, said that if converted, the factory could deliver approximately 1.7 per cent of our national petrol consumption, or 0.72 per cent of our transport fuels, one third of the EU demanded target.