In need of €439 million to reduce carbon emissions, the council got €70,500

When Dublin City Council costed out its priority projects to reduce carbon emissions in two target neighbourhoods, they put the bill at around €439 million.

They recently got word that the Department of Climate has allocated €70,500 to help the projects along, said Darby Mullen, a senior executive engineer at the council. For now, at least.

"It's not a lot of money," said Mullen, at a meeting of the council's climate action committee on Wednesday.

It needs to be spent before the end of the year too, he said, so they'll have to plan carefully how to squeeze the most out of it.

The idea of "decarbonising zones" first emerged in the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021.

Each council area had to chose one or two neighbourhoods to trial local projects to accelerate decarbonisation.

Councils had to target greenhouse-gas emission cuts of 51 percent by 2030 – so within three and a half years from now – and then hit net-zero by 2050, in line with national targets.

In Dublin, Ballymun and the twins, Ringsend and Poolbeg, were chosen. Months of consultation run by the council and Codema, the energy agency, with community groups fed into reports drawn up in February 2024.

Then came crickets.

Funding the plans has been a challenge, Mullen told councillors back in January. He he'd been making the case to the Department of Climate's Decarbonising Zone Advisory Group that councils needed cash, he said.

At that point, the council had been told the idea was to tap into “indirect funding”, said Mullen. 

In other words, funding from the council’s stretched capital budget, and other already existing streams and projects – for initiatives such as public lighting upgrades, and retrofitting grants.

As well as liaising with other agencies that pay for stuff, such as the National Transport Authority (NTA) on public transport. 

At Wednesday's meeting, councillors said that they weren't impressed with the amount that the department has now stumped up in direct funding.

"It seems very very small indeed," said Fine Gael Councillor Declan Flanagan, the committee chair.

Indeed, it was great to see some recognition of the need to support the activities in decarbonising zones, years down the line, said Green Party Councillor Claire Byrne. But "I have to express my disappointment that this is basically funding for more talking".

On the phone on Thursday, Byrne said she knows many of the projects put forward in plans to decarbonise Ballymun and Ringsend and Poolbeg do fall under the remit of other government bodies, which already have funding streams and plans – like active-travel infastructure under the NTA.

That fact also raises the question of whether the council can use any of the €70,500 on active travel infrastructure, Byrne said. "And the answer is probably not, as they have funding from the NTA," she said.

But almost every project has a funding gap, she said.

So any extra cash would ideally be used to fast-track those projects that have been long-fingered, she said – for interim active-travel measures, pending Bus Connects, or to retrofit people's homes, for example.

Funding is complicated and must be accounted for, she said. But she was at that moment walking through Ringsend Park, and looking at the parched grass and thinking how the time for more talk is over, she said.

"We just need to be seeing funding on the table for projects that we actively know are going to help us reduce carbon emissions," she said.

A spokesperson for Dublin City Council said that it is "continuously reviewing funding streams that could potentially support the register of opportunities contained within the Decarbonising Zone plans".

"Additional resources will assist in those efforts," they said.

The Department of Climate didn't respond to queries about funding, sent on Wednesday.

The groundwork

Working out how to spend that €70,500 wisely will be the job of the council's Climate Action Team, said Mullen, at this week's climate committee meeting.

The roadmaps put together by Codema in February 2024 for how to decarbonise Ballymun, and Ringsend and Poolbeg, ran to more than 100 pages each.

They included breakdowns of where carbon emissions were coming from, and how much they'd have to be cut by to meet targets – by 21,820 tCO2 by 2030 for Ballymun, and by 8,780 tCO2 by 2030 for Ringsend and Poolbeg.

And, the reports suggested a suitcase of measures to achieve that. Some of the measures were national – such as the wider electricity-grid decarbonisation, and bus electrification. Others were more specific.

For Ballymun, the report listed measures such as "rooftop solar PV panels and home energy upgrades for about 3,652 homes with BERs between C1 and G".

As well as installing heat pumps for big commercial users such as The Helix Centre for the Performing Arts at DCU, Musgraves Ballymun, and the Travelodge.

And getting 12 percent of current car uses to move to more sustainable modes of transport.

Community objectives were also included, based on votes from local residents. Changes such as expanding Buddy's Farmers Market to the centre of Ballymun, expanding community gardens, and improving public transport links.

In Ringsend and Poolbeg, the report agains suggested measures such as "installing rooftop solar PV panels and home energy upgrades to a B2 BER standard for about 2,408 homes", heat pumps for the top commercial uses, and shifting 14 percent of current car users to other sustainable modes.

Community objectives also feature: such as redesigning Ringsend library as a climate-action hub, addressing heavy traffic, and developing neglected areas into climate-friendly spaces.

Back to talking?

At Wednesday's meeting, Mullen ran through with councillors what the department's current expectations are from the funding.

"They're expected to be community driven," said Mullen, of the decarbonising zones. Councils are encouraged to take risks with the projects that they roll out, he said.

This year is being called a "pilot year" for the decarbonising zones, he said.

While the council gets €70,500 from this "demonstrator fund", he also noted that it does also get some money for local projects through the Climate Action Fund.

How the funding from the demonstrator fund is to be used is pretty broad, Mullen said, and more flexible than sometimes.

But they do have to spend at least €8,000 on community engagement, and run three events this year, he said. It's no sure thing more funding will be there in future years, but the outputs of this round could inform that, he said.

Mullen said the money was to be focused on community outreach and small-scale projects. But councillors said they were unconvinced that much could be achieved with such a small sum.

Flanagan, the Fine Gael councillor, asked what projects the Climate Action Team has in mind.

Mullen said the decarbonising plans for the two areas have projects outlined in "registers of opportunities". But they are ambitious so the money won't go far on those, he said.

He doesn't have a list right now as to what they intend to spend it on, he said.

Byrne, the Green Party councillor, reasoned out loud that the €70,500 would be split evenly between the two areas. "Okay, that's not going to to go very far on capital projects," she said.

The council has actually done a lot of prep work for these zones and what is needed, she said, so what is actually expected from the demonstrator fund.

"Where's the impact? Where's the actual carbon reduction impact? Which is what the [decarbonising zones] were originally designed to do," she said.

She can't speak for Ballymun but she knows residents in Ringsend just want to see things happen, said Byrne. "We're done talking, we just need to start implementing the project."

Green Party Councillor Carolyn Moore said she had similar concerns, that this bit of direct funding would be focused on talking and branding, rather than real delivery of climate action.

How is it a "demonstrator" fund, she said, if it's not going to result in something people can see or experience? "Then what exactly is it demonstrating?" she asked.

Mullen said they'll have to judge success on whether communities feel it was a worthwhile use of €70,500.