Green Ireland

Ireland's green Issues

Archive for September, 2008

Bio Fuel

Sep 22

Posted by admin in Transport, biofuel | No Comments

It seems that with the High price of oil people are beginning to turn to Biofuel as a way to beat the pump price of oil. This also has its share of problems. The more people use, say Rapeseed oil instead of diesel the harder it is to buy it. It seems that the market for Rapeseed has gone through the Roof, where as even a few months ago farmers were still wondering what to do with all the Oil they produced.

A friend of mine as been running his van on rapeseed for the last 2 years. He is now finding it harder and harder to get rapeseed as a lot of local farmers have run out. It seems that supply cannot keep up with demand and its going to get to a stage that it might only be a few cents cheaper than Diesel….

According to an article in the Irish Times we use “183,000 barrels of oil per day”

I wonder how much land it would take to generate 183,000 barrels of oil a day, so that our economy can keep on ticking.

Considering that “One acre of rapeseed yields 115 gallons of biodiesel” That equivalent to 1591 acres, roughly 6 square kilometers. It take between 6-7 months to grow, (plant in march and harvest in September/ September to march). It is a very bad idea to have a mono crop so the land would have to grow other crops for the rest of the year. So we use on average 66,795,000 Barrels of oil a year. (70% for transport).

So to supply all the Biodiesel for Ireland for one year, if we could! it would take 2350 Km/2. But because we can only grow the crop in rotation and some time the land would have to be left idle(good farming practice, IANAF). so 3 to 4 times this amount of land would have to be set aside. So taking maybe 3×2350km/2 = 7051km/2 which isn’t a small patch of land by a long shot, Cork County is 7457km/2 in size. So providing Irelands need in Oil for one Year using Biofuel is huge undertaking and I don’t think that it is even possible to do.

What’s left for Ireland to do? Reduction would be a start! Increase the use of public transport, that is alot easier to say than to implement. I think for the foreseeable future Ireland will depend on Oil. Unless there is a radical shift in Goverment policy!

The use of patio heaters

Sep 22

Posted by admin in Carbon Footprint | 1 Comment

I’m really disappointed with how people have reacted to the “No Smoking ban” in Ireland. There has been a massive increase in the amount of pubs that have built beer gardens and installed patio heaters to keep the punters warm while smoking. While I don’t think there is any problem with having a beer garden,heating the open air in an attempt to keep punters happy is wrong. If people have to go outside to smoke then they should take a jacket with them, or at least wear clothes that keep you warm! In todays environment of global warming, Crazy weather patterns; we should be doing our best to reduce our carbon footprint. Just one pub in Kilkenny has 18 x 2 KW/h bar heaters,which comes out at 36 KW/h Calculating the average CO2 emitted by power stations in Ireland, Approx 650 gram (I used an average of coal 900grams and Natural Gas 400grams). So these heaters would output 21KG/h and this is just for the heaters. If I did the calculation correct :) Depending on the tarrifs obtained from the ESB, ranging from 0.12cent for the first 1500KW/h. It does not take into account the carbon footprint yet!.

I can imagine that as prices for electricity increase, as per the cost of generating electricity pubs will have to look hard at the use of patio heaters, or put up the price of Beer, spirits. which at €4.40 for the average pint in Kilkenny is is getting very costly to have a night out! I think this will be a good thing in the long run as with the cost of heating a smoking area will keep getting more and more expensive, and in times of “recession” we generally watch our wallets.

These are two pubs that have a major use in patio heaters in kilkenny:

Langtons (Gas)

Kytlers Inn (Electric)

The left bank (Electric)

I singled out these two Pubs in Kilkenny because of the amount of heaters that they use to heat their beer gardens. I will add to the list as i find them.