Cashel Palace Sustainability

True to our aspirations of excellence, we have followed best practice in construction, restoration, sourcing and energy to ensure our blueprint for sustainability stands up to the highest scrutiny.

The new parts of Cashel Palace have been designed and built to NZEB Specifications, namely Nearly Zero Energy Building. That means we have a very high energy performance using a very low amount of energy, powered from renewable sources.

Our public areas are heated by underfloor heating and use night-time electricity, while each of our bedrooms and suites have individual air conditioning controlled by the room key. Where appropriate, our lighting is LED and our outdoor lighting runs on photosensitive panels.

We are proud to have a water well on site that provides a portion of the hotel’s water needs and a supply for guests’ bottled water. Our resident Garbage Guzzler gratefully digests all of our food waste, transforming it into rich compost which is used to nourish our gardens.

Delicious food is central to your enjoyment at Cashel Palace, and we are blessed with a rich natural larder on our doorstep. Staying true to the Relais & Chateaux manifesto of making ‘the world a better place through cuisine and hospitality’, we have embraced an ethos that is better for the earth and better for the diner. Provenance is paramount here and, where possible, we source our ingredients within the county borders.

Many of Tipperary’s excellent food producers are members of Origin Green, the world’s only food and drink sustainability programme. Driven by Bord Bia, Ireland’s food and horticulture agency, Origin Green enables the food industry to set and achieve measurable sustainability targets that respect the environment and serve local communities more effectively. By working with like-minded farmers, growers and producers in Tipperary, we strive to reduce our carbon footprint by reducing the hotel’s foodmiles.

We are lucky to have access to our own kitchen gardens and greenhouse produce from Coolmore Stud, while our herbs, lettuces and micro-greens, are grown in a hyper local, pesticide free vertical farm in Ballyporeen, Co. Tipperary.

Cashel Palace’s gardens are proud to be part of the All Ireland Pollinator Programme, overseen by our Head Gardener. In 2024, we introduced hives to the slopes of the Rock of Cashel, under the stewardship of the team at Galtee Honey, to help efforts to protect the native Irish Bee and produce honey for our kitchens. We are also pleased to be growing a hops garden, maintaining a historical link with Cashel Palace’s special place in Ireland’s brewing past.