An article forwarded by Flagstaff21 Dec 2021 15:18
Teamwork is Vital on Ireland’s Energy Transition Roadmap
“Ní neart go cur le chéile” is an old Irish saying which loosely translates as “We won’t win if we don’t pull together”. This is certainly the case for Ireland’s energy transition, where government, academia and a bunch of different business interests are blundering along the route at different speeds and often at odds with each other.
There are a number of parallel routes on the roadmap to a zero carbon renewable energy system such as significant electrification using renewable resources; biofuels and hydrogen-based energy in sectors like transport that are harder to electrify and; removing emissions using carbon capture and storage and re-afforestation. It is already too late to meet the goal of the Paris Agreement. A pandemic style urgency is needed to accelerate the energy transition. The pandemic demonstrated the successes of collaborative efforts and healthy competition among international medical and scientific communities in developing vaccines. We can do the same with energy transition.
Spending on renewables needs to rise. And the supply and demand of dirty fossil fuels needs to be wound down in tandem, without creating dangerous mismatches. Many countries need gas to be a bridge fuel in the 2020s and 2030s, shifting to it temporarily as they ditch coal and oil but before renewables have ramped up. In December 2021 government announced that 2 GW of new gas-fired power generation will be built to meet this requirement.
The area offshore Cork, where the decommissioned Kinsale Head Gas Field is located, provides the perfect example of how an integrated energy infrastructure project could accelerate Ireland’s energy transition. This group of projects combines offshore wind, LNG floating storage and regasification, hydrogen production, hydrogen and CO2 storage, and gas storage in a collaborative energy initiative between an Irish energy developer, an LNG infrastructure company, an offshore renewable energy developer, a refinery operator, a power station, a pipeline operator and two academic research centres. Simply Blue Energy’s floating offshore wind Emerald project will generate 1.3 GW when completed. Curtailed electricity can be harnessed to generate green hydrogen by electrolysis and store it for injection into the gas network.
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