There has been some publicity in recent times about the prospects of finding commercial deposits of shale gas in Ireland. These hydrocarbon deposits, in fine-grained sedimentary rock, have been hailed in the USA as a major new source of fossil fuel and they have been extracted in growing quantities over the past few years there. The method of extraction involves fracturing or cracking the rock deep underground to release the gas for extraction and this process is commonly known as fracking.
The fracking is achieved using a combination of chemicals and water and this raises an immediate environmental concern as the chemicals are pumped underground and cannot be contained. There have already been several accidents in the USA from leaks and spillages and methane gas has migrated up from the shale deposits to pollute groundwater and create a risk of explosion at the surface. Several examples of tap water being ignited can be found on the Internet.
Two recent developments concerning fracking in Europe are relevant and worthy of consideration. The first is a statement from Karl Falkenberg, Head of the EU Environment Directorate, which stated that none of the chemicals used in this process are registered under the EU regulations on the safe use of dangerous chemicals (REACH). The methods of extracting this shale gas must be solidly assessed according to Mr Falkenberg and the chemicals used must be known and approved prior to use. In the USA shale gas extractors do not have to reveal the chemicals that they use in the fracking process.
The second important development in Europe is a report presented last week to the European Parliament on the impacts of shale gas and shale oil extraction on the environment and human health. The bottom line of this report states that it is not worth extracting shale gas in Europe given the environmental risks and damage done by hydraulic fracturing. Essentially the report finds that the downsides outweigh the potential benefits of the EU's limited shale gas reserves.
There are several strong findings and recommendations in the report including that there are major gaps in the regulation of this industry, thresholds for environmental impact assessments are set too high and consideration should be given for a new EU directive to cover all aspects of this industry because of the complex nature of the risks to the environment and to human health. The report was compiled by the consultancy firm LBST and the Wuppertal Institute and can be found at:
The European Commission has recently published a communication on EU energy policy that makes interesting reading. The document discusses where the EU fits in the global energy market, the security of energy supply and related issues such as climate change and energy safety.
The overall objective of the EU’s energy policy is to ensure safe, secure, affordable and sustainable energy supplies. The global demand for energy is, however, changing rapidly with demand from China and India making a significant impact. Globally it is estimated that demand will increase by one third between 2008 and 2035, while the EU demand will remain static, and the demand in both China and India is expected to double. Energy demand in the Middle East is expected to increase by 70% in the same period.
Growth of this magnitude is bound to put pressure on the security of energy supplies to the EU. At the moment the EU imports about half of all its energy needs from third countries and is the world’s largest energy importer when compared to other regions as the table below shows. At present trends the EU will import 70% of its entire energy needs by 2030.
Top energy importing countries and regions, 2008
Country
Exports (ktoe)
Imports (ktoe)
Net Imports (ktoe)
EU27
-482,554
1,495,097
1,012,543
USA
-167,141
798,737
631,596
Japan
-20,204
435,899
415,695
China
-67,930
278,355
210,425
India
-40,070
197,958
157,888
Source: International Energy Agency
Europe is lucky in so far as it is close to major energy sources for some fuels. Approximately 85% of natural gas and 50% of crude oil imports into the EU come from nearby Russia, Norway and Algeria. About 60% of all coal used is produced in the EU and 27% comes from Russia. The remainder, however, comes from as far away as South Africa, Australia, Colombia and America. Practically all of the natural uranium used in the EU is imported.
The EU’s heavy reliance on imported energy, combined with the overall growth in global energy demand, is bound to lead to price fluctuations and disruptions to energy supply. To minimize the risks, the communication discusses the need to invest in energy production and in the infrastructure required to move energy around – both within the EU and between the EU and the sources of supply. This includes the development of a Southern energy corridor between the EU and the Caspian/Middle East Basin as well as upgrading the Eastern corridor which links the EU to Russia through Belarus and Ukraine. Developing, and linking to, solar power in North Africa is also discussed.
According to the International Energy Agency, last year has seen the highest level of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide and the predicted increase in carbon intensive energy in future years will lead to accelerated climate change. Some countries are improving energy efficiency but globally there is little change. The communication states that there is an urgent need for global action on resource efficiency and low carbon energy solutions with demand for renewable energy predicted to triple in the next decade.
Ireland is well positioned to capitalize on this growing threat to the EU’s energy needs. We have the potential to satisfy all of our own energy needs from renewable sources and to export renewable energy to the EU. Our wind potential, combined with pumped storage, can guarantee this form of renewable energy regardless of wind conditions. We can reduce or eliminate the six billion euro bill that we pay each year for imported fuel and can gain additional revenue from the sale of our energy to other countries.
Thanks to the kind readers of this blog who enquired about the absence of new blog posts over the past few months. The author has been diverted on other fronts over the summer months but is determined to get back to regular communications from now on.
This website (www.greenquest.ie) has undergone significant changes since the early part of 2011. The most significant change is the ending of the monthly quiz with prizes. This is due to the drop in sponsorship brought about by the general economic downturn. The website has always operated on a pro-bono, not-for-profit basis and all sponsorship was given out as prizes, apart from the money paid to the web host. There is just sufficient funding this year to keep the site open so the quiz and prizes were dropped and the environmental theme pages and an occasional blog were maintained.
The economic downturn has, to some extent, pushed environmental issues off the current affairs agenda. This is understandable as people worry about job losses, dole queues, emigration, negative equity and mortgage repayments. Politicians and economic commentators worry about a double dip recession and talk about the need to return to economic growth.
Global growth in a world of finite resources is difficult to sustain indefinitely, especially in a world where population figures are predicted to pass the 7 billion mark by the end of this year. Climate change and peak oil can only exacerbate the problem. At present millions are starving in Somalia, and Texas is experiencing one of the worst droughts since records began.
The economic collapse in Ireland should be used as a springboard for development that is truly sustainable. Long term sustainable development is built on three pillars; economic, social and environmental. Ireland has strong social cohesion and a magnificent environment. By leveraging these two pillars we can develop the economy along sustainable lines that will not go through cycles of boom and bust but will be steady and sustained. Exploiting our renewable energy potential, especially wind and pumped storage, should be a priority.
The need remains to raise environmental awareness, particularly in these tough economic times. This website was established to make a small contribution to that need with the tag line 'Engage, Inform and Inspire' . While we can no longer engage people through the offer of monthly prizes we hope that the many hundreds who log on each week will continue to do so.
The United Nations has designated 5 June as World Environment Day (WED) with a special emphasis on forests. The theme is ‘Forests: Nature at your service’ to highlight the environmental, economic and social roles played by the world’s forests. India is the host nation for WED 2011 and there are many events planned to raise awareness of the damage done through deforestation and of the need to manage forests in a sustainable way.
About 30% of the land on earth is covered by forests. Across the world humans are cutting down forests at an estimated rate of 13 million hectares per year - that’s over 32 million acres of trees disappearing each year. The impact of this rate of deforestation is not just habitat loss. Trees act as carbon sinks and absorb the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, from the atmosphere. There is more carbon stored in forests than in the entire atmosphere and when trees are cut down to make way for farmland that stored carbon is released back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. The United Nations stated, in their latest assessment report, that reducing or preventing deforestation would have the largest and most immediate impact on climate change in the short term.
Forests are also the most diverse ecosystems on land, because they hold the vast majority of the world's terrestrial species and rain forests are among the oldest ecosystems on Earth. Only a fraction of known species has been examined for potential medicinal, agricultural or industrial value and many are lost to extinction before they can be investigated.
Here in Ireland the Environmental Protection Agency has organized a competition on Twitter to mark WED 2011. The public are asked to follow the EPA on Twitter and, using the hashtag #WEDIreland, send a tweet advising on a positive action they can take on World Environment Day to help protect the environment. The competition is open until noon on Wednesday next 8 June and the prize for the best entry is a hotel break in one of Ireland’s Green Hotels to the value of 250 euro.
Green Energy BizCamp is an event being organised in Kilkenny by the Carlow Kilkenny Energy Agency and the Kilkenny Leader Partnership to promote businesses ideas / innovation and job creation in the Green Energy Sector. The camp is an information sharing event where experienced entrepreneurs and businesses network and share experiences on developing business ideas & products.
BizCamps have been run successfully at various locations around Ireland and last year saw Kilkenny host Ireland’s first ever FoodCamp and WordCamp. These Camps are modeled on the idea of having all of the information of a normal conference but with the added value of greater networking opportunities and without the costs and strict agenda associated traditional conferences.
This will be the first ever Renewable Energy Camp to be run in Ireland and is free for those attending or speaking. The date is 27th May and the venue is the Hotel Kilkenny which is on the city’s ring road. It offers an ideal opportunity to explore the business opportunities in this sector and participate in a panel discussion.
Speakers
The day is subdivided into 18 slots of 45 minutes each (3 concurrent sessions) where speakers are required to participate and present on a topic of their choice. All speakers are voluntary, share experiences and do not attempt a sales pitch.
At present the agreed speakers include
Michael Prendergast – kilkennycereals.killure.ie
How the Governments pursuit of its renewable energy targets lead to decisions which decimated indigenous Irish renewable businesses in favour of imports.
Tom McEvoy, Lisdowney Wind Farm
Developing a windfarm project – from start to 80% completion.
Joe Heron, www.murrayconsult.ie
Community consultation on Green Energy ptojects.
Tommy Cooke, Renewable Energy Developer
Challenges in setting up an Anaerobic Digestion project.
Peter Kerry – www.carboncandc.com
International standard ISO 14064 for carbon management and brief overview of the EU mandatory emissions trading scheme.
Niall McManus, www.cosain.ie
Using of carbon credits in generating income to match LEADER funds for renewable energy projects.
Frank Gethings – www.EcoEvolution.ie
Archimedean Screw – hydro turbine overview.
Sean Ganley – www.cfgreenenergy.com
Wind turbine space in Ireland for farm, business and home owners.
Dr Edward O’Gorman – www.patentnav.eu
Overview of patents and trade marks in renewable energy area.
Simon Jones – www.aereco.ie
Business development opportunities in each area of renewable energy.
Panelists
There will be a panel discussion in the afternoon to finish off the day. The topic for the panel discussion is “Job Creation & Opportunities in the Green Energy Sector”.
The Panelists confirmed so far are:
Nick McGrath
Nick is the founder of Hybrid Energy who recently closed a successful €800,000 funding round for the provision of reliable, cost effective, and easy to maintain power solutions for off-grid telecommunications base stations worldwide. Their technology enables significant energy savings whilst simultaneously allowing companies to pursue a green strategy using renewable energy sources whether in the heart of the city or in the remotest areas of the globe.
Colm Byrne
Colm is MD at Glas Energy where he has been involved in promoting and selling renewable energy solutions since 2002. Market conditions have declined recently so Colm has had to re-think and re-invent his business.
Pat Blount
Pat is Business Development Manager for Meitheal na Gaoithe and he also owns and operators two wind farms consisting of 7 turbines. Pat has vast experience and knowledge of the wind industry in Ireland and views on potential business and job opportunities.
Closer to the date you can access the full programme at www.energycamp.ie
Tropical rainforests are the lungs of the planet and play a vital role in regulating levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Deforestation is a major cause of increasing levels of this greenhouse gas in the atmosphere and various efforts have been made, with little success, to curtail the activities of loggers and ranchers who slash and burn vast areas of tropical forest each year.
Now Guyana, a South American country on the Atlantic coast north of Brazil, has entered into an agreement with Norway to keep its tropical forests intact in return for a cash payment. Each year Norway will make a payment to Guyana provided the tropical forests are not destroyed and Guyana will use the money on a range of sustainable projects. In 2011 some $40million is being transferred and the money is being used to install solar panels on houses of indigenous people, to link remote communities to the internet and for other sustainable projects in the area of health, education and business. The total amount of money to be transferred will be calculated on the basis of how successful Guyana is in preventing deforestation but will run into hundreds of millions of dollars over the next 5 years.
This initiative could provide a template for other countries in the developed world to recognize the priceless services that rain forests provide to the entire world. It can also assist poor countries such as Guyana to make it more profitable to keep the forests intact rather than to cut them down.
Meanwhile, back in Ireland, the Environmental Protection Agency has published its forecast for greenhouse gas emissions up to 2020. The emissions projections are calculated on the basis of the best available economic forecast. Because of the economic slowdown Ireland will be able to meet its commitments under the United Nations Kyoto Protocol for the 5-year period from 2008 to 2012. However it will not be able to meet commitments made under the EU Commission’s Energy and Climate Package which commit member states to legally binding emission limits up to 2020. Even using the best scenario the annual limits will be breached by 2016 and could amount to 8.8 million tonnes of CO2 by 2020. If the economy recovers faster than predicted then the breach could be even higher than that.
The figures show that we should not rely on an economic recession to meet our climate change obligations. Instead, we should use this time to develop and implement a new energy strategy that is not dependent on imported fossil fuel. Fortunately we have the natural resources of wind, wave and tide to free us completely from the stranglehold of the fossil fuel industry. Using a combination of wind power and pumped water storage we can eliminate our fossil fuel bill of over six billion euro each year. If our new Government has the foresight and courage of its predecessors, who built the hydro –electric station at Ardnacrusha in the 1920s as the country took its first steps into independence, then we, like Guyana, could become an example for the world.
A week long effort by the United Nations to reach a new agreement on Climate Change ended on 8 April in Bangkok with little signs of progress. The existing agreement, known as the Kyoto Protocol, ends in December 2012 and it is now accepted that time has run out to have a new agreement in place by that deadline. The Kyoto Protocol is the only international set of accounting rules that protect the environmental integrity of mitigation efforts of countries around the world. Hopes were high that a new agreement would be reached at the UN Climate meeting in Copenhagen in 2009 but that meeting ended in failure and subsequent efforts in Cancun and Bangkok have made little progress.
Meanwhile recent calculations by the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) show that wind energy is achieving over a quarter of the emissions reductions required under the current Kyoto agreement. The association’s Regulatory Affairs Officer, Rémi Gruet said “An international agreement remains absolutely vital but it’s clear that while there’s an impasse in the negotiations, many countries around the globe are getting on with avoiding CO2 emissions by installing wind energy and other renewable energy sources.”
EWEA calculations show that at the end of 2010, wind energy across the world avoided 255 Mt of CO2, equivalent to 26% of the emissions reductions commitment of industrialised countries under the Kyoto Protocol and by 2020, wind power should avoid some 69% of the pledges made in Cancun.
Last year in Ireland the annual average wind energy penetration was 11% of total electricity consumed in the country and the Irish Wind Energy Association (IWEA) estimates that Ireland could presently generate 25% of its electricity from the wind with no increase in electricity prices. If this was done, IWEA estimates that there would be wind turbines scattered across only 1/2 of one percent of the country, assuming no offshore development. There would be thousands of new jobs created in manufacturing and research, and we would be able to avoid EU pollution penalties. The new Government Ministers in Environment and in Energy should make this a priority.
Over a year ago, the European Court of Justice ruled that Ireland was failing to comply with the EU Waste Framework Directive. The case concerned domestic wastewater disposed of in rural areas through septic tanks and other individual wastewater treatment systems.
EU law stipulates that the necessary measures must be taken to ensure that waste is recovered or disposed of without endangering human health, and without using processes or methods that could harm the environment.
There are over 400,000 septic tanks in Ireland and discharges from these tanks have contributed to the microbiological pollution of groundwater and nutrient pollution of surface waters. Human health is at risk because pathogens can enter drinking water sources via septic tanks that are poorly designed or badly maintained. Irish legislation still lacks provisions for systematic periodic checks and inspections.
The European Commission is now urging Ireland to comply with the European Court of Justice ruling. The Commission is concerned that, a year after the Court ruling, no legal measures have been adopted to ensure that septic tanks are subject to adequate checks and inspections to protect human health and the environment.
On a recommendation by Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik, a letter of formal notice under ongoing infringement proceedings has been sent to Ireland. If Ireland fails to act, the Commission could refer the case back to the Court and request financial penalties.
The destruction of the nuclear power plants in Fukushima, Japan by the resent tsunami has prompted reconsideration across the world of the role of nuclear power in the global fight against climate change.
The need to reduce dependence on fossil fuels had led to a revival in interest in nuclear power over recent years. The nuclear industry had been in decline since the Chernobyl accident in 1986 but, because of the increased emphasis on global climate change, many countries had decided to build new nuclear facilities or to extend the life of existing plants. In Germany the government had reversed an earlier decision to close their nuclear facilities entirely and the UK had selected a number of sites for new or replacement facilities.
In light of what has happened in Japan, Germany has now decided to close some reactors immediately and to hold a review of the remaining facilities before making a final decision on their future. Similar reviews are taking place in the USA and even China, with a strong nuclear industry, are pausing to consider if this is the correct way to proceed.
Closer to home, in the UK, the Minister with responsibility for energy and climate change has also ordered a review of the Government’s plan to replace their ageing nuclear facilities and there is evidence that UK investment banks are losing the appetite for such investment. The last UK Government had decided to use nuclear power to help them achieve the reduction in carbon emissions that were required under EU and UN agreements on global climate change. Without nuclear power there is little chance of meeting the 34% reduction targets set in the 2008 Climate Change Act.
This situation presents an opportunity for Ireland. We have the natural resources to generate significant renewable energy that can be exported via the interconnector to Britian. Using a combination of wind energy and large hydro storage reservoirs, as planned by the Spirit of Ireland initiative (see www.spiritofireland.org), this country can quickly fill the gap generated by the delay or cancellation of the UK’s nuclear plants. In the process we can generate thousands of jobs and reduce our dependence on imported fossil fuel – a commodity that is costing more and more each day.
Ministers and officials from nine European countries and executives from the European Commission have agreed to implement a series of measures to protect the North Sea and its approaches from oil spills and other pollution.
In the light of the pollution of the Gulf of Mexico caused by the Deepwater Horizon accident earlier this year, the Ministers agreed to take appropriate actions to prevent and respond to accidental and illegal pollution from offshore oil and gas operations in the area. The agreement was struck in Dublin at the end of November.
An action plan lays out how the governments of the UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Ireland intend to prevent pollution, prepare for incidents and respond to them in a co-ordinated way.
The states are all parties to the 1969 Bonn convention, which Ireland acceded to earlier this year. The European Commission is also a party. The action plan is divided in three parts: strategic aims, operational objectives and specific actions.
The Bonn convention's parties intend to boost aerial surveillance of shipping and other maritime activities, and ensure efficient evidence gathering following pollution incidents. National responses will be aligned and better co-ordinated.
Specific actions agreed include updating the agreement's counter-pollution manual.
There will also be joint training exercises to prepare for combating possible oil spillages in the region. The action plan will be reviewed in 2012.
Meanwhile he American National Oceanographic and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) has closed an area of the Gulf of Mexico fishing grounds to red shrimp fishing after black tar balls were found in a catch. The NOAA said "The precautionary measure was taken after a commercial shrimper, having hauled in his catch of the deep water shrimp, discovered tar balls in his net."
As suspected, the oil has not disappeared and this is a setback for shrimp fishermen in the region who thought the worst was over.
There was a need of immediate and serious steps to save the sea from the pollution to spread and affect the living beings in the sea. Can you please post what all steps were taken and what is the result now? It is already a more than 6 months.
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