Thanks Marge,

Some detail on the environmental engineering work happening at the stadium below,

Carbon neutrality at Croke Park is being achieved through a state of the art environmental improvement programme covering the stadium's electricity, waste and water management systems

The project began with an energy audit which looked at Croke Park's use of electricity, gas and diesel fuel. Interestingly, the floodlights at the stadium are powered by diesel generators and other parts of the stadium can also be switched to the generators during major events. This is mainly because the floodlights were retrofitted to the stadium and the grid in the area and the infrastructure in the stadium itself would not support running them directly off the grid.

Environmental enginneers at the stadium are working on the implementation of a building energy management system - Croke Park is a big place and it would be almost impossible to physically turn off all the lights every night. The management system will allow for the pre-programming of lights to switch on and off when they are required depending on the different events or activities that might be taking place in the stadium. The idea is only to use energy when you need it.

Already completed implementation of the energy monitoring system and now working on the energy management system and reviewing the extensive studies into the possibilities for renewable energy on the site. It looked at solar energy first but ruled this out because of the excessively long payback time. In fact, the payback time associated with it was longer than the equipment itself would have lasted.


It is also looking at wind as well but the option of putting turbines on the roof is ruled out by the floodlights which were added later. The existing structure wouldn't support wind turbines as well as these. Putting up a large standalone turbine near the stadium is also inappropriate due to the urban setting. But still looking at the optins and have erected four wind monitoring stations around the site and we will look at the data from those before making a decision.

There is one other from of renwable energy which does hold promise-looking at geother mal energy which would use the heat from underneath the pitch.

Finally, there is alternative energy - combined heat and power is also something to look at, this is where the gas used for heating would also be usd to generate electricity on the site.However, we have to be careful that we don't end up wasting heat or electricity juste to generate the other.