Mayo County Council
How do we know this information?
Mayo replied to our FoI and AIE requests in a prompt and professional manner.
Summary Mayo is another County Council without a plan for the energy transition, but had an excellent energy savings campaign.
On-site Renewables Mayo County Council had no renewable energy installed on its premises to save money.
Own Investments Mayo had no PV or wind farms of its own to generate cash to support front line services common in English County Councils. See West Suffolk
Efficiency Plan Unlike many Irish Councils, Mayo had an energy efficiency campaign producing €165,000 pa.
Rates In terms of its rates, it only reported windfarms and none of the other 8 types of renewable energy. Windfarms along with rates from the National Grid provided nearly 11% of Mayo’s rates. The figure is probably higher as there are issues with Council finance systems in the South. It is not known if Mayo’s financial systems could not ‘see’ the other forms of renewable. See N.I. example here. – see Donegal Council for solution to finance coding issues.
Including Mayo’s gas terminal and the National Gas network, fully 34% of Mayo’s rates are from energy.
Organised Plan The Council appears to have no plans to maximise the financial benefits to itself of the energy transition. This Council has similar problems to Mid and East Antrim Council where the Council is ‘addicted’ to rates from fossil fuel plant of £5 million a year. The situation in Mayo is worse at over €7.5 million. The Council would need to grow its €2 million rates from renewable energy production greatly to match the winding down of rates from gas pipelines and the gas terminal in Mayo.
The only obvious way to do this is for Mayo to own wind or PV farms as is now becoming normal in GB -> see Warrington for instance. Or West Suffolk. Or UK’s biggest Council Energy Storage Scheme. Here is a report from Bradford Council that backs up what other GB Councils have found – It is far cheaper and more efficient to ‘go green’ and the ratepayers benefit from the new circular economy.
See the breakdown summary for Mayo County Council here:
| Annual € | |
| Rates Income from Renewable Energy Projects | € 2,061,372.43 |
| Income from Council’s own renewable energy | Nil |
| Cumulative annualised savings from energy savings campaign | € 165,000 pa |
| Savings from the electrification of Council’s vehicle fleet | Nil |
| Rates Income from fossil fuel plants and gas networks | € 3,497, 532 terminal
€4,108,893.54 pipelines |
| Rates Income from grid infrastructure and related plant | € €1,863,572.88 |
| Total | € 11.7 million pa |
Council’s Reply
We are currently crafting a request for the 22/23 Financial Year aimed at investigating their preparedness for the energy transition. It will be backed by professional Legal and Accounting advice and will be far more comprehensive. We have learnt a lot from this last exercise.
We will be using the European Directive on Environmental information. This mandates European public bodies to provide all environmental related information to be published to a fulsome extent, at no extra cost.
We will be going back to Mayo with this new template. We will be publishing both the request and the answer from Council. We will be letting the Council know that their response will be published.
A PDF of the Council’s EU Directive response will be here soon.