Green Ireland

Even though the financial crisis has hit Ireland hard, there is already a new bubble happening.

“The Green energy bubble.”

Everyone except those who have headed for the  hills, knows that energy cost is going to rise. The cost of producing electrical energy is going to rise dramatically, Oil,gas, coal are all under pressure far more that they ever were.

Now that governments are waking up to this fact, and investors are thinking of what to invest in now. it looks like that has now been found, Green energy is the new buzz word, but I wonder how long it will last.

I have blogged before about Ireland’s potential on wind energy before, and I still think we are well placed to make full advantage of this.

But the thing that I am afraid is going to happen, there will be a boom in building wind turbines, and then once this ends there will be another crash.

What the government need to do is to do popper planning and not rush projects to “market”. It has like the building boon., if not managed correctly, put ireland of a frenzy of building again.

What we need is a more sustainable way of managing the projects that will proposed to local governments.

If the legislation is not put in place, what might happen is, banks will see this as a quick way to make money or “invest money” and I’m sure some of the nama money will be invested here.

Green energy is a bubble that can only last for a certian length of time, and Ireland does not need another bubble.

It occurred to me that when fossil fuel becomes too expensive and the world supply of it dwindles and we are forced to move to an alternative source of energy, especially for transportation, how will governments that make a lot of revenue on taxing petrol and diesel survive without this stealth tax, it seems the more economic activity the more money is made as people will drive further take more holidays etc.

When the conversion to a more environmentally friendly mode of transport takes place, More buses that run on electric power more trains that are electric where will the government get the money that it relies on so much ?

I don’t think you can tax electricity more that it is, Ireland is one of the most expensive countries for electricity and that is set to continue, now that the recession has kicked in and we are slowly reaching the point that we will not pay the highest price any more. The realisation that we have got ripped off in the last 10 years or so, we only have ourselves to blame, as we excepted these high prices.

As the government know all too well now with VAT/Stamp duty on houses/ VRT are all in massive decline and the budget still in the RED, I think this will be a glimpse of the future.

Even if economic growth take off to again, I don’t see how it can, that another story. The fact that we rely so much on liquid Fossil fuel for a mean of transportation, I don’t see how we can change the system now without causing even greater amount of pain.

I travel up to Dublin for a good while over the last few weeks, the one thing that struck me is that we have a hell of a way to go in terms of public transport, we have an addiction to the car and its not going to change any time soon.

When I traveled on the Dublin motorway/M50 from Kilkenny what struck me was the amount of trucks. If it wasn’t a road I would have mistook them for a train. I past at least 5 trucks in a row and the more to the left and right of me. It would seem that we have invested huge amount of money in truck transportation, at a cost to transport via more traditional modes of transport, transport of freight on train that can pull 2000 tons V 20 tons for a truck which make more sense ?

The average price of a litre of petrol is about 1.12c and for diesel its 1.03c depending on where you go, what will happen when the price rises to 2 euro/ 3 euro a litre ? and the thing to remember is that there is vat on top of that. I think VAT + duty accounts for at least 60% of the cost of a litre liquid fuel and with the raw product set to rise the VAT on top will also rise.

The good thing when that will happen when the price of fuel rises to a threshold that the market cannot afford, something has to give, either the Government reduces the cost of the Duty and VAT on the raw product or people stop driving as much, the only thing I see about the not driving as much is that for most people that is not an option. Due to this governments planing permission we mostly live outside of the public transport system and this system is too expensive and to inflexible to be any use to all, but to tourists who have all the time to wait around for hours till the next train or bus arrives 2 – 3 hours later.

I do think a radical and painful shift to non fossil fuel will be the only way in which Ireland will be able to sustain itself in the coming years. I cannot find any information on what % of revenue generated is from fossil fuel and the transport industry, I suppose it gets lumped in with general excise duty, when I find the information I will post it and correct this post.

So what if any are the alternatives ? as I seem them not many, we can travel less, live where we work, better public transport.

There are ways of getting revenue from usage of a car, one way would be to introduce a toll for using the roads, or maybe a mileage card that need to be topped up ever once in a while.

Every time I put petrol in my car I think at what stage will it become too expensive for me to travel by car, I’m already paying 200 Euro a month and its getting more expensive as the months go by.

With an alternative to the ICE car a very distant future and public transport that is not going to get any better. How are people going travel to work. I’ve no idea what the solution is to all this but I don’t see an economic recovery unless as I said we make the transition to a better system of transport.

Great news for the renewable energy generation in Ireland, Minister for Environment, Eamon Ryan introduced a 19 cent feed in tariff.  This is good news for micro generation of electricity. While most countries have enjoyed a feed in Tariff of some sort, Ireland and our main Electricity Generation Company (ESB) never had a feed in Tarrif. Now all that has to be done is for the ESB to make it easy to connect up to the Grid. The ESB know to be very lax in connecting people up the the grid and the price they charge for the service is Astronomical. So I wonder what they will charge for micro generation ?