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IRELAND HAS A new plan for how it will reach 70% renewable electricity generation by the end of this decade.
The government’s revised Climate Action Plan released last week set out that the emissions generated from electricity must fall by between 62% and 81% by 2030 compared to 2018 levels. This is the biggest goal of any sector.
The national grid operator EirGrid has released the details of a roadmap for how it says this can be achieved.
It sets out a number of projects largely focused on upgrading the current electricity grid used in Ireland to move away from the use of fossil fuels.
More than 40% of electricity currently comes from renewables in Ireland.
The new grid plan “seeks to minimise the impact on communities while still delivering on the renewable ambition”, EirGrid said.
The roadmap – entitled Shaping Our Electricity Future – will require more than €1 billion of investment on top of an existing €2.2 billion in other grid infrastructure projects.
In a statement, Environment Minister Eamon Ryan said: “We must radically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and make the transition to cleaner, indigenous renewable energy.”
Ryan said the increase in renewables will “insulate Ireland from the volatility” of fossil fuel prices and “enable us to meet the projected increased demand for electricity over the coming years”.
Mark Foley, the CEO of EirGrid, said this plan will “secure the transition to a clean energy future”.
“The grid requires unprecedented change in the next ten years. This transition to clean electricity will affect everyone in Ireland and will unquestionably be difficult, however the benefits will be truly transformative at both a societal and an economic level,” Foley said in a statement.
In terms of reaching the upper 80% target set out in the Climate Action Plan, Minister Ryan told reporters at the COP26 summit in Glasgow that “the approach taken for here will also deliver the 80%”.
Foley added: “We’ve done the work for 70%. 70% tackles the physics and the engineering problem.
“We’ll be well capable of doing the work and figuring out the cheapest pathway from 70-80%.”
“It’s not as if we have to re-invent the wheel here,” Ryan told reporters at the briefing. “We have to accelerate what we have already been doing and to particularly develop the offshore.”
A briefing document on the plan said renewable energy will be “dominated by offshore wind in the Irish sea”.
Developing the plan
EirGrid looked at four different approaches to developing this plan – one of which involved developers deciding where to locate clean electricity generation.
This is the main approach being used in Northern Ireland under this plan. In the Republic, however, it will be mostly developed through a ‘generation-led approach’ where renewable electricity is generated close to where the most power is used.
Expansion of the existing grid will be conducted through a number of methods including line upgrades, new technologies used on the wires and more overhead lines.
Use of coal and fossil fuel-based generation will be phased out within the next decade with gas used to “fill any gaps”.
A document on the new plan said that the use of gas will “ultimately be displaced by hydrogen or some other form of non-carbon generating fuel”.
More than half of the projects included in the plan are focused on upgrades to existing circuits on the grid.
According to Wind Energy Ireland (WEI) – the industry representative group – there are just under 400 wind farms across the country.
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Does this plan include making the planning process for offshore wind farms so convoluted that one of the main offshore wind energy providers in Europe pulls out of the country as happened last week. Decision makers in this country should be ashamed.
@MacEoin.T: yes, I was wondering that myself. Does the target date take into account the convoluted tendering process, objections, rows concerning cost over runs and multiple missed deadlines?
Wave technology needs to be considered in this as we could be potentially a world leader in this area. If we investigated composite materials such as plastic waste and reformed it for use with wave capturing tech then this could help with wind which does not blow all the time.
@Twitruser2021: Have you a link to any commercially deployable wave technology anywhere in the world?
@John Kennedy: Here is 1: https://www.rya.org.uk/knowledge/planning-licensing/offshore-renewables/wave-energy
@Twitruser2021: The main problem with offshore wind and wave electricity generation is that the sea is a corrosive environment.
The Pleamis commercial wave generation off Portugal failed for this very reason, other research projects have been damage by waves and wind, the same is also true for offshore wind turbines, though they unlike wave power, they have had commercial applications and generated to the grid.
But the same hostile corrosion, lightning, wind and waves, constantly damages them from the initail foundation construction phase, throughout their existence.
So the problem with the fantasy of relying on them as the solution, in a national plan to achieve net zero carbon emissions over any timeframe least of all nine years, is that they are obviously not capable of doing so.
Time someone called a halt to this lunacy.
Current system demand 3,794Mw, current wind generation 42Mw
Projected system demand 4,890Mw forecast wind generation 331Mw..
Source https://www.smartgriddashboard.com/#roi/wind
Don’t know what anyone else Solar panels are doing at the moment, but mine are generating nothing.
@John Kennedy: Did you try turning them the right way up
@John Kennedy: There will always be days like today when the wind doesn’t blow. But it blows enough which is why storage technology like hydrogen is being developed.
@P Mc G: Not only facing right side up, but South facing and angled to 30° from horizontal for the latitude
Great news. Every single drop of oil and lump of coal used to generate electricity is harmful to the environment and imported. Unquestionably a win/win situation to remove them.
Next we need to be able to sell excess solar energy back to the grid.
@Stephen McMahon: absolutely agree but still no roadmap for payment to small suppliers. Other countries have been doing this for over 10 years.
I have 6kw on my roof and esb networks still refusing to supply smartmeter never mind actually paying for the excess
@Colin Gibbon: Whats you roof generating at the moment?
No nuclear of course but loads more windfarms so the incumbent foreign BigBoys can make easy money off us and the shortfall covered by telling us all to sit in the dark between 5 and 7 and whenever it’s not windy
@Quiet Goer: Not sure if you’ve ever been to the West Coast of Ireland but I can tell you I have been there and it has always been windy.
I imagine a couple of kilometres off shore, 80m in the air we will not have to worry about it not being windy.
Ireland is in a unique position within the EU to generate renewable electricity using wind turbines and seems to be nothing but negatively to this plan.
If the plan was to use your suggested alternative of building nuclear power stations, of which we have no experience building or managing, I would say the reaction of the general public would be even more negative.
When is this madness going to stop. The more we have of it the more expensive our electricity gets. All being built on the back of crazy soft contracts, which us the consumer pay with the highest cost in the EU, when you add in all the levies etc.
But real mega lie in all this, is that if you double the amount of installed wind power you have, it makes the wind blow for twice as long. Of course all based on the building of a super grid all over the continent in the theory that when it blows off Achill, is isn’t blowing off Athens.
This Warming World War will only be won by bringing into action the Military Industrial Combines, be they Western, Russian, Chines, Indian or which ever, to immediately develop and deploy to every present day thermal plant, literally thousands of new generation SMRs. They were invented back in the fifties, but had two mega problems. No good for bomb making and would have put the coal miners out of business.
@Nicholas Grubb: Back to bed with you Nicholas, the tinfoil hat brigade haven’t woken up yet.
@Nicholas Grubb: Name one SMR that is operation anywhere in the world right now.
Ireland is hardly going to take a chance on some new technology that no country is doing now.
@Roger Bond: There are I think 67 projects worldwide to get Gen 4 up and running. Until now, they have had less than one percent of the development subsidy that has gone into wind, USA $200 bn. Germany €200 bn. and all the rest, lets say another €600 bn. The Moltex recently approved in Canada is a good example, but probably less advanced than Chinese, Indian and Russian ones. The Rolls Royce one is not a true Gen 4, but of course they have a lot of submarine work under their belts. How about telling us how much goes into armaments each year. A trillion?
What annoys me about this is that if the government is so sure that we will all have Electric cars 1 million and a lot of heatpumps the demand on the grid is going to increase exponentially. Yet you never hear that we are going to generate multiples of our current capacity. Not withstanding all of that we still need the same reserve capacity for when the wind does not blow
@Alan Lester: thats what bugs me too Alan.
At the moment electricity only accounts for 20-30% of energy demand. 30-40% of that is renewables. Thats the scale of the transition. Fair enough heat pumps EVs are more efficient so the demand per say will be lower however increased efficiency doesnt mean decreased consumption its actually the opposite.
@Alan Lester: actually, that’s fully built into our projected future requirements
@Donal McCarthy: I am not sure how you would plan for charging cars.I dont think the government has done any studies on how far on average a person commutes. Unless they mean We will make sure you wont drive to work so you will only need to charge once a week. They have no idea how much Solar (domestic) will be fed into the grid and have not even got the FIT in place yet. Soon we will be getting a grant of 5k and need a big chunk of that for a BER with a payback of savings of 100 years return on the capital investment. I now this is a bit of a rant, But there is no flow or joint up thinking to the plan. only new taxes and charges, Even the smart meters are all about charging more that current rates. With the peak periods soon to be expanded.
Is there a possibility that global warming affects the way winds flow?
@Claude Saulnier: its the doldrums out there for the past month ,it’s pure lunacy all these wind farms and spelective winds
Grid infrastructure development is key to using renewables, without it blackouts, shortages etc would plague the grid if we were to go with majority renewables. The grid needs VARs (inertia) built in to deal with peaks in demand and surges in wind/solar. Wind/solar do not produce this.
The problem with addressing the necessary challenge to cut carbon emmisions and the current and future electricity generation deficit is, that the debate is often dominated by ideas and opinions that are entirely based on falsely believing that theory and research, are the same as current real world commercially scalable solutions.
These ideas of commercially viable offshore wind and wave or cold fusion, are from the theoretical what if, or maybe we could, wishful thinking portion of this debate, not a we can right now or can in the next ten years deliver a fully functioning real world power solution.
Unless we are willing to look beyond the soundbites and aspirational rhetoric and demand facts, we will spiral into a national disaster that will make Brexit look like a win by comparison.
This issue is so big and the proposed solutions are hard to grasp, so let’s for a moment reduce this question and proposed solution to a scale that everyone can appreciate.
In a month from now you have to cut off your electrical connection to the grid, but you can install a 1 kw wind turbine and a solar array on your roof, any vehicles your family currently has also have to be switched to electric, as does all your heating, cooking etc.
You cannot use any other power sources outside of your own home for anything, because you have fully committed to your sustainability commitments, in addition your power requirements will grow by 5% every year and your turbine and panels have a 25 year lifespan.
Now look outside and imagine how much power you would be generating?
@David Van-Standen: i look outside and see my diesel jenny?
:p
@Anarch Eco: And that just might be the future reality. :(
Wind turbines are not renewable. Only the wind is.
@Colm Vambeck: aye, repeatables!
Lest not forget, when we are getting Electricity from.the wind, onshore we are burning fuel to turn generators, in anticipation of the wind slackening, immediately the onshore equipment is already on and ramps up to deliver generation capacity, Renewable is a notion, until our back up is also Renewable, we are just burning fuel for the sake of it
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