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Endesa aims to make its plants more friendly to environment

Pat Boyle

SPANISH energy giant Endesa plans to overhaul its oil-fired power plants in Ireland to enable them to run on less polluting natural gas by the end of 2012, it said yesterday.

Endesa, which bought 20pc of the assets of the state-owned utility ESB last year, signed engineering contracts with Mott McDonald Group and ERM to convert the Tarbert and Great Island plants, the Madrid-based company said yesterday.

In August last year, Endesa purchased €450m worth of power generation plant from the ESB with a total export capacity of just over 1,000 MW.

Endesa bought the plants from the ESB in a deal brokered under the terms of an agreement with the energy regulator which requires ESB to reduce its share of the power generation sector in Ireland to 40pc by 2010.

Included in the package were the Great Island power station in Wexford and another at Tarbert in Co Kerry. Both stations were built in the late 1960s.

It also included 156 megawatts of peaking plants -- which can be kicked into action quickly at times of high demand -- at Rhode, Co Offaly; and Tawnaghmore, Co Mayo.

Generation capacity

The purchases accounted for 20pc of the state-owned companies' generation capacity and 16pc of the total national installed power capacity.

Gas-fired combined-cycle power plants have been promoted as a means of reducing CO2 emissions, as such plants release the smallest amounts of CO2 of all fossil-fuel based power plants.

Studies show that overall emissions from such plants are now running at less than half that produced by coal-fired plants and around 75pc of the emissions produced from oil-fired plants for the same amount of electricity output.

The announcement marks the first step in delivering on a promise made by the Spanish firm when it completed the ESB deal in January. "The deal presents Endesa with the environmental challenge of improving the efficiency of current plants and the construction of cleaner generation technologies," it said.

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