Energy
TU Dublin will continue to promote demand reduction wherever possible through participation in the Reduce Your Use campaign, Green Labs certification procedures, reviewing building opening hours, assessing and reviewing ICT loads concerning auto-energy savings systems, and enhancing overall energy management systems at building level. In addition, demand response technologies will be investigated to incorporate measures across building stock.
To illustrate TU Dublin’s current and anticipated energy demand relative to an overall decarbonisation pathway to net zero, an overview by campus and buildings is refined to indicate key targets with milestones for reviewing our emissions profile across 2025, 2030, 2040, and 2050 time horizons.
Natural gas is currently the primary source of space heating for TU Dublin. The challenge to decarbonise thermal energy is immense in terms of both the scale of work and related costs. As all public bodies have been instructed to do, our emissions savings rely on government targets set out in the National Climate Action Plan to decarbonise the national grid to 70% renewable electricity by 2030.
Sectoral risk arises from anticipated increased reliance on the national grid to decarbonise, and therefore to distribute risk, a portfolio of additional measures to decarbonise our activities must also be developed in parallel. To that end, TU Dublin continues to review opportunities to implement renewable energy initiatives on campus. TU Dublin has developed a district heating network system on the Grangegorman and Tallaght campuses. These networks give the flexibility to use different, more sustainable, and centralised heating sources.
The Tallaght campus is heated by a district heating network developed with South Dublin County Council, which uses waste heat generated from a nearby Amazon Web Services data centre, currently supplemented by air-source heat pumps. On the Grangegorman campus, the potential for deep-bore geothermal heating is being explored in partnership with Geological Survey Ireland, with the assistance of CODEMA. An initial trial borehole to 1 km depth showed promising results, and the partners are actively exploring funding opportunities to develop a full production Deep Bore Geothermal well that would largely decarbonise heat on the local network.
Through these initiatives, and subject to availability of funding, TU Dublin aims to provide a minimum of 70% renewable space heating on site by 2030 and will engage in opportunities to extend these benefits to local Sustainable Energy Communities (SECs) and Renewable Energy Communities (RECs).
For the latest information on the University's energy reduction strategy review Section 3 the latest iteration of TU Dublin's Climate Action Roadmap.
In 2020, TU Dublin published the TU Dublin Energy Policy