How the hell is Ireland going to meet its renewable energy targets???

mlmcelligott

The Irish government released “The White Paper on Energy Policy” in 2007 which made public its ambitious targets for three energy consumption areas to be supplied from renewable sources by 2020. Those targets were; RES-E 33%, RES-H 12% and RES-T 10%
i.e. 33% of electricity generation (increased to 40% in 2008), 12% thermal and 10% of all transport energy usage to come from renewable energy sources.

I know that all the energy companies have jumped on the wind energy wagon to try and reach the 40% target for renewable electricity sources and ESB just introduced electric cars which they, coincidently, forecast to achieve 10% transport market penetration by 2020 but how are we going to reach 12% thermal?

What is a renewable source of thermal energy? Would a combined heat and power (CHP) plant running on biomass be an example? In what capacity could Ireland reach that 10% target? I’m assuming that the main places where CHP plants could be used are hospitals, universities, large factories, etc that need electricity and heat 24 hours a day but if you add all them up do you even come near 10% of the whole countries thermal energy use?

What do you guys think?

for anyone who would like a bit of background reading - http://www.iei.ie/media/engineersireland/services/engineersjournal/2009/2009issue4/Can%20we%20reach%20renewable%20energy%20targets.pdf

quentingargan

mlmcelligott wrote: »

The Irish government released “The White Paper on Energy Policy” in 2007 which made public its ambitious targets for three energy consumption areas to be supplied from renewable sources by 2020. Those targets were; RES-E 33%, RES-H 12% and RES-T 10%
i.e. 33% of electricity generation (increased to 40% in 2008), 12% thermal and 10% of all transport energy usage to come from renewable energy sources.

I know that all the energy companies have jumped on the wind energy wagon to try and reach the 40% target for renewable electricity sources and ESB just introduced electric cars which they, coincidently, forecast to achieve 10% transport market penetration by 2020 but how are we going to reach 12% thermal?

What is a renewable source of thermal energy? Would a combined heat and power (CHP) plant running on biomass be an example? In what capacity could Ireland reach that 10% target? I’m assuming that the main places where CHP plants could be used are hospitals, universities, large factories, etc that need electricity and heat 24 hours a day but if you add all them up do you even come near 10% of the whole countries thermal energy use?

What do you guys think?

for anyone who would like a bit of background reading - http://www.iei.ie/media/engineersireland/services/engineersjournal/2009/2009issue4/Can%20we%20reach%20renewable%20energy%20targets.pdf

About 1/3rd of a typical household's thermal energy is domestic hot water. If 60% of that comes from solar, that would be 20% of domestic thermal. Of course, that would require universal adoption, which is unlikely, but add in log gassifying stoves, pellet boilers and so forth and the domestic market might step up to the plate OK.

piby

We have the highest potential for biomass in Europe. On a scale of 1 to 10 we're, well, 10 according to an SEI report I read a few months ago! Although the cons of biomass tend to be more numerous and controversial than solar, wind or wave energy so it might not be the best solution, it's just a better alternative to coal.

Geothermal is one that's used by Iceland and a few other countries. Although it's not really applicable to Ireland the same SEI report concluded that a small area around Mallin Head might work. A drop in the ocean though really . . .

Personally I think wind, water, solar and a few others combined with a reduction in our energy consumption, or at least energy wasted, is the way forward. Insulating our homes better etc. to stop so much energy being lost is one of the idea regularly touted.

To be honest I've never really believed that our lifestyles in the West are compatible with sustainalbe energy and the evironment in general anyway. I think all this renewable energy ideology is commendable but ultimately flawed in that it fools us into believeing that we can continue our energy consumpton habits through new technology without having to change our living habits.

Macha

The other thing to remember is that as efficiencies increase, the percentage of total energy consumption and therefore the percentage of total renewable energy consumption also decreases.

As an example, if we make 50% of our cars electric, those cars will be using less energy and therefore their contribution to our transport renewable energy target will also be less.

So we can have a situation where we have increased our renewable energy significantly but because the EU judges us on renewables as a percentage of overall energy consumption, we might still not make our EU targets.