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A NEW SURVEY of property and construction industry insiders has shown that nine out of ten believe that Ireland should harness wind as its primary source of energy going forward.
The results of the survey, conducted by Ecocem, ahead of the Better Building conference, also showed that 70 per cent of respondents believe tidal and wave energy should be part of the energy mix while solar power was also a popular choice at 58 per cent.
Nuclear power continues to be a contentious issue and debate about it has intensified following the second worst nuclear accident in history, at Fukushima. However, despite this, more than 12 per cent of those surveyed believe nuclear power would be a suitable energy source for Ireland going forward.
Just 30 per cent of respondents chose gas and the controversial practice of fracking to produce shale gas was cited by less than 6 per cent of respondents, with coal coming in the bottom at 3 percent.
Water charge
The conference today also includes a session on water conservation strategies including the issue of the water charge.
Not surprisingly, 80 per cent of the 400 industry insiders who responded to the survey agree with the introduction of the divisive water tax which is expected to affect 1.35 million homes, with charges of between €100 and €400.
75 per cent of people surveyed believe €100 or higher would be a fair amount to charge a four person household, with nearly 30 per cent believing €200 or higher is fair.
Less than 15 per cent believe it should be €50 while 12 per cent believe less than €50 would be a more equitable fee.
This year’s conference will have more than 40 speakers presenting in four parallel streams, covering topics such as green real estate, passive house standard, innovations and green materials.
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Glad I’m not a cynic, otherwise I might think that the construction industry favoured solutions that required the highest levels of……..construction.
My thoughts exactly.
Thankfully I’m not a cynic either or I might just think there was a very large element of self-interest in the responses. Forget wind power, it’s just too fickle. Should be investing in wave and tidal power. Ireland’s an island for Buddha’s sake. How many mile of coastline with totally predictable tides ?
@Joseph Recovering tidal power is not so easy and while Ireland has a lot it is less than you might think. Check the Department of Energy website.
I think people might be confusing construction and developers. Not too many right mind people complain that they can get from Dublin to Cork, Limerick, Galway etc in half the time that they could 10 years ago. Not too many people complain that road deaths have halved. Will people complain when the cost of fossil fuels starts making us as a country uncompetitive, when there are blackouts etc. I can’t understand why harnessing free, natural and renewable resources is not seen as creating a better future for generations to come in Ireland and the world at large
David your take on this is wrong, people are for it, but it can only supply a max of 50% of power needed, no grid can take it, you still require baseload plants.
We are at near acpacity with wind, pumped hydro, and other technolgies need to be looked at.
ask yourself this David; why is it that the British are seeking to build windmills in Ireland when they have ore land than us ?
I’d be worried about it except for the fact that Pat Rabbitte was involved and all his decisions are now open to judicial and constitutional review !
Seeing as our construction industry is on the floor I’d love to know
320 people were involved in this survey even though by our Constitution The air of Ireland belongs to all 4 odd million of us !
We are not near capacity with wind, there is still current huge room for improvement of capacity, a need for 2,000 megawatts by 2020! yes there is a need for back up ‘traditional’ power stations for when the wind stops blowing, e.g a frosty morning, but still better to be have these turbines providing energy! for example christmas day last year 40% of the electricity came from Wind energy!
Michael as percentages go we are at capacity, you say we need 2GW but don’t say if its an increase our load is About 4.5GW .
Also thr fossil plants operate at really bad efficiency when running at low output so this increase in GHG should be allocated to wind as that’s why it’s there
David when you shut down our power plants what are you going to replace them with. Then you will see blackouts. Why weren’t engineers industry asked what they thought about wind energy
Ah, the wisdom of the construction industry. Thankfully we listened to them during the boom.
‘Construction industry in favour of building new stuff’. Stay tuned cos after the break ‘Retailers in favour if selling things’
“Horror as butchers are in favour of killing animals”
“Turkeys discuss Gilmore and Christmas”
We should be using offshore wind to pump sea water into reservoirs all along the coast during nighttime and then use these hydro stations to help in supply when there is limited wind capacity during the day. Wind + hydro = proper sustainable energy.
Otherwise known as “the spirt of Ireland” campaign… It would be brilliant to see but NIMBY brigade would be out in force
The spirit of Ireland project should be getting a lot more press.
One of the best ideas to use our resources I’ve seen.
If you”ve got a minute, google it.
Spirit of Ireland (wind + hydro), community owned wind farms (crowdfunded), tidal, wave, solar combined can make Ireland a very wealthy energy exporter to the evolving European supergrid in the future. Funded by offshore oil and gas discoveries. Petrel resources recently announced over 1 billion barrels of oil at Quad 35 & Quad 45 prospects. Exxon Mobil describing South Porcupine as a ‘bright prospect’ May become one of the biggest fields in the world. Hopefully our government are playing their cards right and will secure an ethical share of same for Irish people and use this to fund/catalyze our renewable energy industry and over 100,000 sustainable jobs in construction, manufacturing and maintenance. The future is very bright indeed for Ireland if We The People ask the right questions and protect our childrens’ inheritance?
More info on all of the above on http://www.Trillions.ie
All those billions won’t be enough to bail out the banks who’s criminal managers are living a life of luxury
Shows how much you know about the topic, serious problems with holding seawater on land in reservoirs and also the fact that off shore wind energy is not yet viable, hence only 25 megawatts are produce from this compared with over 1500 from on shore!
How about geothermal out of Iceland? Safe and in huge quantity, the cable cost about a billion quid… Loss during transfer < 10%…
Is this a viable proposition?
Please explain!
Wind energy may be unsightly but there’s no shortage of this resource!
Deirdre,
Bit busy but here where it starts…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/11/iceland-volcano-green-power
The Cable costs about €1m per kilometer… This is the tech which has made this possible…
Thanks for the link Paddy!
Any way to avoid having to keep handing over money to the oil/gas tyrants and their network of terrorists,
is a good way.
Deirdre, wind can be in very short supply………as detailed by others. Two winters ago the UK had one of it’s coldest winters and power demand was very high. Because of prevailing atmospheric conditions, (which effectively locked-in the cold), there was virtually no wind. Even the UK government’s own figures showed that for a whole month there was close to zero output from combined mass of installed wind turbines, (and that’s rather a lot of ‘em) .
For every Megawatt of installed wind power you need an installed Megawatt of reliable energy generation. Fact. Turbines simply make money for their owners due to government subsidies, without which they would never be economic, or built. Are politicians best mates with the constructors/owners ? Could be.
Most sensible comment I’ve seen on this thread. The rush to wind energy in this country is a repeat of the building boom. A mix of lax planning laws, private companies backed by speculator investors attracted by generous subsidies, a powerful lobby group with close political ties to the government..does this mix sound familiar?? The bogtech plan is a scam..and us as taxpayers will pay the price whilst big business laughs all the way to the bank..if we don’t wake up to this fact, were doomed to repeat the same mistakes that were made 10-12 years ago.
I think we should reexamine steam power. Specifically the steam off my p**s which is all I’d give for this ludicrous suggestion.
Here’s an exercise, class. Go and look up what Ireland uses per year in Mwh. Then look up each turbine generates. I swear, this renewable energy malarkey seems to have captured the imagination of the very class of shysters who six years ago were selling one bedroom studios off the plans for 400k a pop.
You nailed it right there, The lost Lenore. It’s the next big thing for investors to make a quick buck out of with dire consequences for the ordinary citizen. The wind lobby is very powerful, it has massive public relations budgets and friends in the government to hoodwink the taxpayer into thinking there is some sort of win-win situation with windfarms, jobs and saving the planet and set of jerseys for every parish that a lovely turbine is built in..IT’S A SCAM>>>
Waiting for the ‘concrete built wind turbines are better built turbines” advert. Scammers and conmen the lot of them.
Lets destroy our countryside and kill all the birds. Great idea construction people. I suppose they would also favor concreting the whole country also?
Just the green bits
How many precious birds… and other animals… and people die from the increased risk of respiratory illness attributed burning hydrocarbons….
10 time more birds are killed by vehicles than wind turbines!
@michael. Our Birds of Prey are particularly suseptable to turbines. They are just making a come back in this country and this wind farm scam is the last thing they need.
@ Ryan, Turbines would never be put in places of areas with such birds of prey which are vulnerable, natura 2000 sites are protected and the EIS would show these things and it wudnt happen!
A white tailed eagle has already been killed by one in Killarney. The turbines are right in their habitat in Kerry.
Nonsense there put in remote locations , which is the habitat of the birds
sure roads are the habitats of many sheep and cattle as usually new roads go through farm lands, also the destruction of the grassland, yes obviously there are in remote locations as these remote locations are usually places of highest wind speeds, for example in holland there was the issue with birds, both breeding and migratory birds, the breeding birds are rarely killed and are killed by cars more than turbines, but they turn off the turbines for on average 3 days a year to allow the migratory birds to pass through this area. At this point in time they are the way forward, and due to our european obligations we need to get to 40 % renewable electricty by 2020, and wind will be the major player in this! they must go somewhere, we cant as a country continue to import 90% of our energy needs!!!
sheep and cattle arent wild native animals. Obligations to Europe? We also have an obligation to Europe to protect our wild natural wildlife. I dont want to get into the scam of these turbines tonight but the bottom line is that they are un-economical, are heavily subsidised, and they dont work when people need electricity the most i.e. on freezing cold winters days, no wind. We will need to find alternatives.
Yes and any rare natural wildlife are protected in the natura 2000 sites, which has relevance to only new construction I know, yeah i agree they are heavily subsidised and don’t work on frosty mornings, but what about the other 15 – 20 % time on average that they are producing energy for the entire country, as i said we cannot continue to be importing 90 % of our energy needs, wind isn’t the whole solution, but at this point in time it is one of very few solutions available to use that is a renewable source! Also one last point is that the whole idea of this national and international grid is vital for wind, solar & wave to work, i.e. if there is no wind in ireland, there is more than likely wind in Norway, Portugal etc etc!
90 percent of builders are in favor on something that will result in more building. jeez Michelle journal.ie your analytical skills are really coming into play today, i am sorry i did not go to college to become a journalist like you
Wind isn’t viable for base load anyways. There’s plenty of occasions when the current installed wind capacity has only been generating at 5-10% of it’s listed capacity. You just need a nice High Pressure system to sit over the country and presto the windmills end up generating next to nothing.
I fail to see where the thousands of permanent year round jobs will come from, sure there will be jobs during construction period but those will only be temporary. Most of jobs created will be in likes of China or Germany where the wind turbines will actually be manufactured. By and large wind farms are remote monitored from a central site and thus there won’t be lots of jobs in monitoring them.
The people who brought you high density apartment blocks and housing developments miles from where they were actually needed at grossly inflated prices think that this is a good idea?
Hmmm
A real pause for thought time now if there never was one before.
A quick check on what the property sales industry and farmers organisations think should confirm if it is a good idea or not.
And look at who is spearheading the project. Element power,Tim cowhig..ran for fine Gael in the last election. Mainstream power, Eddy O’Connor, close friend of pat rabbitte, long standing ties to the Labour party..the more you scratch the surface of this bogtech project, the more you find it stinks.
Spirit of Ireland project is great in theory but very few sites are suitable, water accumulation, avg wind speed etc and then there is the other issues planning etc. Offshore seems a likely choice, again massive investment. Personally I would like to see every household educated properly with the appropriate info (cost breakdown etc) to make themselves more efficient. I imagine consumption would dramatically reduce if this form of project was pushed and pushed hard.
i live in the city, theres always noise, i wouldnt mind a small humb of a wind turbine, then cars, sirens, garda helicpterts etc
People who like looking at those things suffer from aspbergers syndrome.
Show how well they know hoe the grid works.
The grid can not sustain more than 50% wind, it’s quiet hard to keep wind at 50hz and to ensure it operates at the corect voltage. when a load drops, the voltage shoots up. there plenty more reasosn, btu these are the easiest to explain to non technical people
Its stupid that we dont have massive off shore wind and wave farms were way behind on harnessing natural energy.
How many commercial wave farms are there in the world?
Wavebob are about to announce that there bankrupt this week.
Next time you make a suggestion ensure the technology exists to harness the power
Ireland is already committed to 37% of its renewable energy coming from wind power plants. What the construction and property people have to say on the matter is irrelevant.
We closet enough to 40% as it is
Not content with ruining his countryside with one-off housing and ghost estates, Paddy now must complete the scarring of his landscape with oversized ugly windmills.
I suppose, you’d rather Smog and pollution to clean energy?
Wind energy makes no sense from an economic point of view, these turbines are subsidised by grants, of course if we had a media worth a damm who would inform the people of the truth behind the wind farms then the people could make an informed decision. They are raising these turbines around me here in Wexford, tearing up the roads, trucks going at all hours of the night, no consultation with the people. Of course our country has ceased to be a democracy many years ago. The vested interests as usual make a killing. Some of us are waking to what is really going on. The following can be found in pdf format on the internet, this a a UK study of wind power.
Why is Wind Power so Expensive by Gordon Hughes?
Foreword by Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne
While the environmental damage caused by onshore wind farms is arousing
increasing concern, the cost of wind energy is also a very important topic.
Indeed, I believe it has been underresearched, underdiscussed and underdebated.
I believe that when taxpayers know the truth about the subsidies that wind
turbines have attracted, they will not be at all comfortable that their hardearned
income is being spent in this way. It is an unhappy fact that wind
farms are almost entirely subsidised by a complex yet hidden regime of feedin
tariffs, tax cuts and preferential tax credits.
A typical turbine generates power that is worth around £150,000 a year, but
attracts subsidies of more than £250,000 a year. These subsidies are of course
added directly the bills of energy users.
The cost to consumers of the Renewables Obligation scheme alone has
risen from £278 million in 2002 to more than £1 billion in 2011, which is a total
growth of £7 billion over nine years.
As Gordon Hughes’s report shows, meeting Britain’s target for renewable
energy by 2020 would require a total investment of some £120 billion in wind
turbines and back-up. The same amount of electricity could be generated
by gas-fired power plants that would only cost £13 billion, that is an order of
magnitude cheaper.
An analysis of wind patterns in the United Kingdom suggests that wind generation
offers a capacity usage of between 10 and 20 per cent of theoretical
capacity, which in itself is an indicator of how much of the capacity can
be statistically relied on to be available to meet peak demand. It compares
with around 86 per cent for conventional generation.
This means that fossil fuels still have to be available as a back-up in times of
high demand and low wind output if security of supply is to be maintained.
So new conventional capacity will still be needed to replace the conventional
and nuclear plants which are expected to close over the next decade
or so, even if large amounts of renewable capacity are deployed. To put it
plainly, this means that every 10 new units’ worth of wind power installation
has to be backed up with some eight new units’ worth of fossil fuel generation.
This is because fossil fuel sources will have to power up suddenly to meet
the deficiencies of wind. Wind generation does not provide an escape route
from fossil fuel use, but embeds the need for it. It is clear that wind power
does not offer a decent alternative to fossil fuels.
Government plans to construct thousands of wind farms have been thwarted
by a growing tide of public opposition. The percentage of wind farms bein
ing refused planning permission has risen sharply. Last year, nearly half of all
onshore wind farms in England and Wales were refused planning permission.
More than 100 MPs have recently written to the Prime Minister to criticise the
economic and environmental folly of wind farms, demanding that the billions
in subsidies wasted on these schemes be slashed.
The total consumer bill for wind subsidies by 2030 is estimated to amount to
a staggering £130 billion. A recent analysis of UK wind farms revealed that
a dozen of the biggest landowners will between them receive almost £850
million in subsidies, a huge amount of funding that will be paid by ordinary
families through hidden taxes on their household electricity bills.
I am immensely unhappy that our intermittent wind power has attracted
such monstrous subsidies. I am particularly unhappy because the facts have
been hidden from the consumer who will have to pay the bill for this folly.
Gordon Hughes’s excellent report is a timely contribution to educate policy
makers and the wider public about the fatal flaws of Britain’s wind obsession.
Grand but we’re close to peak oil and gas is also running out, if we use gas then were going to have to look at fracking, and this is a no no. We need to look at newer technologies, unfortunately wind energy is not transportable, pumped hydro, nuclear, solar etc are all viable options,
But remember the other best form of dealing with our energy supply is to examine how we use our energy.
By reducing our load we reduce our requirement
Wind energy can be stored in the form of hydro. Spiritofireland.com
Its absolutely untenable. Wind power is not even an economically viable power source at a small scale level
Why weren’t engineering industry asked about wind farms. Why is science disregarded in Ireland
Smart Grid… The wind is always blowing or the sun shining somewhere across Europe.
When doesn’t the wind blow in Ireland, why aren’t there more windfarms on the coastline and they’ll be the thing of the future!
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