Plans for a €40 million district heating system run on hot water supplied from the Poolbeg incinerator are being advanced by Dublin City Council.
Council chief executive Owen Keegan said about 50,000 homes could be heated using water heated by the waste incinerator and piped to homes in the Docklands on both sides of the Liffey.
The plan was initially proposed more than a decade ago but was delayed because of delays with the incinerator itself.
However, Mr Keegan said the proposal was now firmly back on the drawing board and could be extended to other areas of the city with the addition of other heat sources.
He instanced the ESB’s current electricity plants on Poolbeg which he said could contribute heat recovered during the electricity generation process. Many of the major buildings developed in the docklands over the last decade had been planned so that they could use the heating system, he said. Pipes have been installed under the Liffey to take the hot water from the incinerator to the north docklands.
