Green Ireland

Ireland's green Issues

Warmer Times ahead

Feb 9

Posted by admin in Politics | No Comments

Now that the recession is hitting and the Government is trying to figure out how to get out of the mess.  Eamon Ryan and John Gormley announced a plan start a programme where older houses will be insulated creating up to 4500 jobs, Insulating houses is the best way to save on energy bills, but it seems too little too late.

Houses built over the last 10 years were build with minimum code requirement in mind, even houses that where build just a few years ago barely pass the mark. Building codes in other countries have be constantly revised over the years to make best use of current technology our building code is outdated and was only recently updated.

Even taking best practices from say the Zero Energy Building code would have being a start. It seems that this is just putting a band aid over the problem. Builders have being let away with “murder” when it came to insulation and applying all the energy saving ideas that have developed over the years.

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EU makes tought decisions

Oct 7

Posted by admin in Carbon Footprint, Politics | No Comments

It’s about time that governments took a hard line in regards to CO2 Pollution. It turns out, even given the fact that Europe and even the world might experience a recession. I’m for once, am glad that the EU has not made a U-Turn in policy, I think given the long term effects of increased CO2 in the atmosphere it’s good that European Parliament’s Environment Committee has continued to support such strict emission targets. It easy for industry to call foul, it will stop us from being competitive.. there will be loss of jobs etc.(smoke and mirrors to me).

The transport sector accounts for a high proportion of CO2, It seems that in recent years car manufactures have gone the reverse of improving efficiency in the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE), producing largest and large cars, Sport utility vehicles (SUV’s). So making the car industry accountable for it’s product is a good measure, and I hope that with many other sectors, the tough CO2 emissions regulations will spur Industry to produce more greener products, consumers to think before buying inefficient products.

Even the food sector can reduce their CO2 emissions, bar the production and manufacture of food stuff, Flashy food packaging, Refrigerated, 100,000 air kilometres cesar salad, these have a tremendous CO2 emission record. I would imagine that as the CO2 (tax) is applied to these products, the cost of buying local (farmers markets) will seem cheap in comparison.

So bring on the tough decisions :)

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Future Proof Kilkenny

Oct 5

Posted by admin in Environment | No Comments

An organisation called Future Proof Kilkenny is holding a number of events from September to December.

It would be worth it for everyone of all ages to check out the events.There are kids and adult events,

from workshops to showing films on green and environmental issues.

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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 3x2350km/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.

Biofuel or Biomass

Jun 27

Posted by admin in biofuel | No Comments

The EU Think tank JRC (Joined Research Center) has published a document on biofuel and the impact it has on food/fuel price, the Carbon offset that may or may not be present. depending on how the bio fuel is grown and made. It also as some recommendations on the use of biomass instead of Oil for heating etc.

There are some interesting things said in this document, it touches on a lot of area including security of supply etc.

The EU as a good energy site, its a bit overloaded with information energy.eu the link for the document is here

Transport Ireland

Jun 26

Posted by admin in Transport | No Comments

I did a comparison for 4 people travelling on public transport via the train/bus and then compared it to a rented car.

The Train:

Dublin -> Galway €24

Galway ->Dublin -> Cork €53.50

Cork -> Limerick Junction -> Waterford €31

*There is no direct connection from Galway to cork.

Cost: €108

Let do the same journey by bus.

Dublin -> Galway €13.50

Galway -> Cork €15.30

Cork -> Waterford € 15.50

Cost: €44.30

Now by Car (Rented).

A Opel astra cost €167 (5 days)

As the cost of travel is depending on distance.

Dublin -> Galway 215~ Km (12 litres)

Galway – Cork 209~ km (12 litres)

Cork -> Waterford 109~ km (6 litres)

Add another 20 litres for good measure ( driving around time)

* The Car has a fuel consumption of 6 litres per 100km

Total cost for 50 Litres would be $66 Euro at €1.32 litre.

Cost: €233

So my simple comparison looks like this.

4 people travelling by train: €424

4 people travelling by bus: €177

4 people travelling by car: €233

There is a lot of things that I am not taking into account.I made no attempt to compare like for like just the cost. I did not for instance compare comfort/ convience /time etc. I just looked at cost for 4 people make a simple tour around Ireland. I would think that the vast majority of people in Ireland know what our public transport is like and I don’t want to be seen taking a pot shot at public transport.I’m sure there is a more indepth report on this somewhere, and would love to see if there is a Government report on it.

Conclusions: It’s cheaper to get the bus, the car comes in second,and last is the train.

Recession

Jun 24

Posted by admin in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The ESRI came out today and said that Ireland is in the grips of a recession. What does it mean to be in the grips of recession ? According to wikipedia article, its the decline of GDP and economic growth. In a world gone made on buying ever cheaper and cheaper goods, this must good thing for the environment. People buy less SUV(Gas Guzzlers) less Goods shipped from china, which mean china consumes less energy. With the higher cost of living especial in Food / transport. People are going to be conservative on what they buy, as Disposable income gets spent on just staying afloat! This is where in Ireland we are not prepared, We have massive personal debts, public transport in Ireland is in chaos. (see previous post). The Government relying on the construction industry to balance the books. It is crunch time for the Government because instead of planning for the future, politicians here plan for the next election term.

The Government will have to invest more in renewable technology that will get manufactured here, Invest in research and development for sustainable living. I think that in the coming few year we are going to be at a disadvantage in comparison to the rest of Europe. we have no manufacturing base, most of it is gone. In hind sight government and government policy has took ireland down a path that is not sustainable in the long term. What does this mean for the average person ? What does this mean for Ireland ?

Green Party Policies

May 2

Posted by admin in Politics | No Comments

I’ve Just skimmed over the Green Party’s Energy Policy available on their website, It’s 3 years out of date! For a policy as important as Energy to not be updated in 3 years clearly sets the tone for how important the green party see Energy In Ireland.

The contents of the document is nothing new, even in 2005 its was pretty old news. I think everyone knows that oil is running out, The use of alternative fuel sources is a must. But the over whelming facts that are coming to light now is that fuel from food is not a good idea. The Green party as a whole has to support alternative source of fuel but also the strategy for getting there has to be in the policy, I read a lot of wishful thinking and a lot of statistics about running out of coal/Oil are dependence on Imports. our(Ireland) reliance on Fossil fuel to power most of our power stations. For the for see able future we(Ireland) need strong policies with regards to energy, and the action to back them up. I do know that we cannot wave a magic wand an instantly have the same life style that we have consume ever increasing amounts of energy.

The Transport policy is a bit better in details but it still falls down in places.The introduction of new tax laws for cars does not go far enough, in my Humble opinion I think that the sale of SUV should be make so expensive as to put people off buying them. I don’t just mean the price of the vehicle but Road tax should be adjusted upwards to hammer home the point. We cannot ban them as this goes against EU laws…

They support the metro project which looking at the estimate cost, will be about 6 billion for 12km of track,thats a whopping 500 million per km. Now that has to be insane! Reading a proposal by railusers.ie which would extend the Luas,DART Service to The Airport. I think it would cost rather less that 6 Billion have these services put in place.

Why is the Green Party supporting the metro which is clearly a waste of money ?

Why is their energy policy 3 years out of date ?

My faith in the green party as a whole is rapidly fading away!

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Food for fuel

Apr 22

Posted by admin in biofuel | No Comments

Just a few years ago it seems that bio-fuel would save the world, now it seems as the world looks to food crops to make ethanol  there is a shortage of food on the world market. Countries that rely on vast imports of rice/corn/wheat are finding that the price for these staple crops are doubling or getting so expensive that some countries have imposed restrictions on exports.

While we in the rich countries can afford to spend a few Euro more at the local supermarket, for the vast majority of people around the world a few euro mean the difference in eating at all. I don’t think the people who pushed for bio fuel really understood the problems that would arise from using food for fuel.  Even now the EU has allowed farmers that put aside land, to be used to stop the rise of even higher prices next year. It looks to me as if there will be a bumper crop next year… Will that not depress the market then ? so that the following year farmers won’t plant as much ? or will the extra crops be used for making bio-fuel.

I do hope that the summer will be a good one :)   At least if i don’t feel the price difference poorer people will. I do think that over the next few years we will all be in for a lot of interesting times.

I think that the whole plan for bio-fuel has to go back to the drawing board!

Corn Can’t save us