Ireland: an Island of Energy in Transition
Frontispiece: Rugby Union is one of several sports in which Ireland competes as an island, not separately as Northern Ireland (NI) and the Republic of Ireland (ROI). Climate change and the energy transition are challenges best faced by a unified island of Ireland approach.
Ireland’s contribution to global GHG emissions is negligible compared to the current big polluters in the world. Compared to those countries, Ireland’s challenge to decarbonize our economy is relatively easy. However there is something else Ireland can offer the world to combat climate change and progress the energy transition to a lower carbon and prosperous economy. Leadership. Ireland has the capability, resources, diplomacy and character to provide a home for an energy transition center of excellence that not only will design and execute solutions for the good of Ireland, but has the capacity to export the requisite technology, capability, business models and leadership to help the rest of the world, particularly developing countries and regions around the world. There are opportunities for both the public and private sectors to participate and prosper in a growing Irish economy. The risks and opportunities are inclusive of both the Republic of Ireland (ROI) and Northern Ireland (NI) and much of the existing energy infrastructure is already cross-border in scope.
During the latter part of 2019, I was proud and excited to be appointed a Non-Executive Director of Senergy Innovations Ltd, a solar thermal product developer in Belfast, and Adjunct Full Professor of Energy Geoscience in University College Dublin. These roles are key to my career strategy to work on projects associated with the energy transition, both in the United States where we are now residents and increasingly back in Ireland and the UK where I was born, brought up, educated and spent the earlier part of my energy career with BP. I have been researching and will continue to pursue energy transition opportunities in Ireland (by this I mean the island, NI and ROI). In this article, I share some preliminary observations.
Figure 1: ROI’s GHG emissions picture by sector. NI’s carbon budget is about 20 million tonnes CO2e, with a similar proportion division (Source: EPA).
Ireland’s climate change challenges
Figure 1 illustrates the makeup of ~80 million tonnes of GHG emissions that Ireland delivers to the atmosphere each year. The ROI (~60 million tonnes) is on a worrying trend of emissions increases year-on-year, in reverse of its pledge to reduce emissions to 20 per cent below 2005 levels by this year, but is set to exceed its target by 5 to 6 per cent. It’s a similar picture in NI (~20 million tonnes), where the province’s contribution to the UK’s 5th Carbon Budget to reduce emissions to 65% of 1990 levels by 2030 is off target. The sectors are broadly the same in NI and further action including policy change is required across the spectrum. In addition to the reduction in GHG emissions, Ireland also needs to consider actions to be taken with respect to resilience and adaptation to the impacts of climate change. Although the island may be less susceptible to physical changes associated with climate change, continued research and development into coastal erosion, groundwater, flooding and other such risks, is needed.
Figure 2: Energy balance for Ireland in 2017. (Source: SEAI)
Focusing on energy
As Figure 1 illustrates that agriculture represents about one third of Irish emissions and is an enormous challenge on its own. Nevertheless, in the rest of this piece I will focus on energy. Figure 2 illustrates the energy balance for ROI in 2017. Again the balance is similar in NI. There are three larger segments of the energy spectrum to be considered: electricity, transport and heating/cooling. In all of these sectors there are social and financial aspects to be considered, as well energy efficiency and emissions reduction. For example, about one in four households in the ROI are in energy poverty, unable to afford to stay adequately warm. For the sake of all consumers, particularly those less well off, the total levelized cost of energy (LCOE) needs to come down as part of the energy transition in Ireland.
Figure 3: Energy flow in electricity generation, 2018, ROI. (Source: SEAI)
With respect to electricity generation there has been notable progress in greening of the grid with reduction in the use of coal, oil and peat as fuels and an increase in the proportion of renewables (Figure 3). Renewables are now close to 40% of the energy in the grid. Further more EIRGRID, the company that manages the grid, has had the foresight to experiment and develop systems, tools and policies to increase the resilience of the grid, for example being able to accommodate up to 60% of the load from variable renewables. There are plans to increase this limit to 75% and I am told that the Irish grid is the envy of Europe because of this ability. Natural gas, used to generate a little more than half of Irish electricity, remains critical to the Irish grid, not only as a replacement of coal, oil and peat, but providing a resilient, despatchable base load to the Irish grid.
Figure 4: The Moneypoint Power Station, Co Clare - Ireland’s last remaining coal-fired generation and recently written down in the balance sheet of its owner, ESB.
Despite this progress, Ireland electricity is amongst the most GHG intensive in Europe, at 375 gCO2/kWh in 2018. This is because of the continued presence of coal and peat in the energy flow, largely in the form of the Moneypoint power station (Figure 4). Coal and peat were responsible for 40% of carbon emissions from ROI electricity generation, despite only accounting for 14% of electricity generated. In a very useful report on the energy transition in general, ESB have acknowledged again that Moneypoint’s days are numbered, but appreciate that the challenge of further decarbonization of the Irish grid is a difficult task. They list four options:
Further (beyond 50%), intermittent renewables in conjunction with interconnectors and storage.
Sustainable Biomass
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS); and
Nuclear Power.
Figure 5: Lazard Levelized Cost of Energy 2019 Review. (Source: Lazard)
Although it has some proponents, nuclear power appears to be generally opposed in Ireland. Furthermore, full costs for a new new nuclear plant have grown to the point that it makes little sense from an economic perspective (Figure 5).
Biomass has more supporters, and with strict sustainability controls, biomass from a number of different sources has the potential to be a significant component of Ireland’s energy spectrum. Biomass wood can replace peat in electricity generation, biofuels brewed from algae and plants can substitute petroleum products, and biogas from for example animal manure has the potential to be injected into the natural gas infrastructure as well as being used (behind the grid) locally to where it is collected. The use of woody biomass in electricity generation also has its critics, who argue that the inefficiencies of burning wood and its replacement in the biosphere make woody biomass worse than coal.
Natural gas accounts for about half the electricity generation in Ireland and together with its use in heating buildings and businesses over 0.5 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas is consumed every day. Most of this gas is imported from the UK through interconnection pipelines. Most of the remainder comes from the Corrib gas field and the nearly depleted Kinsale Head gas field. Corrib is on decline too and it took twenty years to deliver from discovery. Although the Irish Offshore Operators Association have put out a lot of publicity and opinion pieces to express concern Irish energy security and about the Irish government’s attitude to offshore exploration, there doesn’t appear to be a viable pipeline of future natural projects to rely on while planning for Ireland’s future energy needs.
There are widely held views that Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) is critically required for abatement of emissions from challenging industry sectors. It is also clearly an opportunity for CCS to be coupled with electricity generation to capture emissions at source. Although ESB have signed a memorandum of understanding with Equinor concerning CCS, and there is gathering activity around the world to develop CCS projects, there appears to be a huge amount of work to be done to grow CCS to the scale required to abate fossil fuel burning. The problem appears to be largely economic rather than technical, in that without carbon pricing projects are difficult to commercialize. Nevertheless, an integrated approach to research, development and execution to CCS in Ireland appears to be a worthwhile component of the island’s energy transition plan. A further approach to decarbonizing Ireland’s gas grid is through the injection of biogas and hydrogen into the system, replacing fossil natural gas.
Figure 6: Statkraft Ireland staff and management onsite at the 11-megawatt Kilathmoy battery project. (Source: Statkraft)
The most obvious growth sector for electricity generation is further expansion of renewables together with storage to reduce the dependency on natural gas. The first battery project in Ireland was completed just a few weeks ago in County Kerry by Statkraft. The project has 11 mW of storage coupled with 23 mW of wind power and is designed to feed reserves into the national grid if supply experiences a sudden drop-off. On the heels of that project completion, Innogy SE announced last week to build a 60-MW battery storage project in Monaghan. The potential for battery storage appears to be escalating and there are other ways to store energy that are being researched around the world.
In addition to opportunities to reduce the emissions from generation of electricity there is also a huge amount of potential to improve the efficiency of transmission and use of electricity. I will cover some of those opportunities in the next section.
Figure 7: With construction works due to commence in March 2018 and expected to be completed in January 2020, South West College (Enniskillen) will be developing the first educational non-domestic building to be built according to the Passive House Premium Standard in the world. This £24.6 million investment will create a modern 8,200 square metre college, filled with cutting-edge technology, hosting 7000 students and 200 employees. (Source: Passive House Association of Ireland)
Warm homes, cool businesses
I am convinced that a key component of the energy transition to a lower carbon economy is reducing demand for energy in all sectors, doing more with less energy to drive prosperity forward in a sustainable manner. Demand reduction comes through a number of channels but the most important one is arguably about waste reduction and efficiency improvements. Our Tesla Model 3 is so much more efficient in converting energy into miles on the road than its petrol (gasoline) peers, uses a much cheaper form of energy than petrol, and has substantially lower maintenance costs. Oh and by the way, its performance also outstrips its gasoline competitors. So for me its a far better saloon car to have in the household, never mind a substantial reduction to our carbon footprint. So it needs to be with the buildings in which we live, learn, work and enjoy ourselves.
Perhaps the extreme version of building energy efficiency is the passive house standard (Figure 7). Such buildings can use 70 to 90% less energy than ordinary ones. This extraordinary performance is delivered through homes and other buildings being designed and constructed to be “tight” to prevent ingress or egress of energy (typically heat) in this way. A very good account of building and owning such a home was provided last year by Richard Lyon on LinkedIn. Richard, a colleague of mine back at BP, describes a very attractive personal investment outcome over the life of his new Edinburgh home. Furthermore, he upscales those economics to suggest that the cost of converting 20% of Scottish housing stock to this standard would have been about the cost of building its current wind farm stock, and that the energy demand avoided by doing so would have been about equal to the energy supplied by the turbines! Richard also points out that such energy efficiency reduces dependency on finite resources and improves resilience from risks such as price gouging by foreign natural gas suppliers. It seems to me that incentives and regulations to encourage retrofitting of further energy efficiencies in old buildings and adhering to passive house standards as much as is practicable for new builds ought to be a cornerstone of government policy.
Even the most efficient buildings need some energy to power them. Richard’s home has an electricity supply and a natural gas combi boiler to heat his water. In Ireland, there remains a large dependency on kerosene for heating, particularly beyond the natural gas grid. Ironically firmus are extending the gas network in Northern Ireland which is an interesting approach given that this could lock many homes into burning gas for decades. There are proven alternatives to this. Firstly, and most promoted by the greener energy companies is the enhanced electrification of homes to use electricity to heat spaces and water, assuming that the price and carbon footprint of the electricity is better than the kerosene and natural gas. Efficient heating (and cooling) of buildings can be performed by heat pumps with ground-sourced heat pumps being the preferred version. Heat pumps taking heat from the shallow subsurface and concentrating it to heat space and water is one example of energy production and consumption “behind the grid”, although in this case the grid is still required.
“Prosumers” can also get energy for free (well, free after purchase and installation costs) from solar Photo-Voltaic (PV) panels on their roof or in their garden. A recent article in the Irish Times outlines the kitchen table economics for having a few panels on your roof suggesting a 6 to 9 year payback period for the original installation costs. Adding battery storage and a control system to divert power in different directions as required adds to the installation costs, but also enhances efficiency and flexibility. The ROI government’s Climate Action Plan has stipulated that net metering will be phased in so that electricity grid companies will have to pay panel owners for power diverted into the grid.
A cousin of solar PV is solar thermal, a largely neglected technology in deriving free energy from the sun in a home. Solar thermal panels collect heat from the sun using water or some other fluid to transfer that heat into the home. Because the heat collection accesses more of the sunlight’s energy spectrum than PV, it is double the efficiency of PV and more amenable to the Irish climate. Similar to PV, energy can be diverted to storage if not immediately used and storage can include the ground underfoot if combined with a ground source heat pump.
Figure 8: A vision for geothermal energy in 2020 (Source: Storengy)
In addition to shallow geothermal (ground sourced) heat, deeper drilling can access hotter rocks and fluids, which can be used to heat transfer fluids (closed loop) or can be withdrawn to the surface (open loop). Ireland’s deep geothermal potential is somewhat limited by a subsurface temperature gradient that is relatively low to other parts of the world such as Iceland and Indonesia. With a typical gradient of 25 degrees per kilometer depth it is unlikely that temperatures greater than 100ºC can be accessed economically to drive standard steam turbine generators. However, temperatures in the range of 75ºC can be useful to drive district heating systems and be used in turbines that use lower boiling point fluids (Figure 8). Geoscience research to date has shown potential for such deeper sources of heat in Ireland and identified a number of targets, but further funding and research are required to de-risk these targets. Meanwhile, shallow geothermal or ground source heat and storage appear to be a huge opportunity in Ireland and this potential appears enhanced when integrated with other renewable sources of energy such as solar thermal. However, this potential is in stark contrast to the recent proportional share of heat from renewable sources in Ireland which reached only 5% in 2018.
Figure 9: Final energy by mode of transport. (Source: SEAI)
Green Mobility
Transport in Ireland is responsible for about one third of emissions associated with energy. More than half of the transport energy consumed is associated with road traffic with private cars making up the majority of that group (Figure 9). Similar to elsewhere in the world, I think the transformation of mobility emissions is much more to do with societal attitudes than technical solutions.
Technology does have a role to play of course. The latest generation of battery electric vehicles are awesome pieces of technology, both hardware and software. As progress is made with batteries and prices come down, EVs will soon be available in a range of models to compare with cars with Internal Combustion Engines (ICE). The size of Ireland and relative shorter distances involved in commuting mean that range anxiety should not be a problem, so the principle practical issue appears to be the availability of charging points. This issue is currently particularly acute for people living in apartments or homes with only on-street parking, making accessible charging points a challenge. Local governments and commerce need to work together to provide solutions for people where they live and where they work. Again government and commerce need to collaborate to ensure what a really good investment an EV is as well as being great to drive. I sense that once a significant number of people realize that owning an EV is a status symbol of just how smart you are, never mind helping the planet, uptake will explode.
Technology is further behind for heavy goods and transport vehicles compared to cars. It seems to me that hydrogen fuel cells may be the best solution for this class, and it was good news last week that Energia announced its supply of renewable hydrogen for Translink buses in Belfast, with the vehicles constructed in Wrightbus, NI’s very own emissions free bus manufacturer. Similar innovation and trialling needs to occur for other heavy transport on Ireland’s roads.
Figure 10: Framework for the progressing the energy transition.
Connecting the dots
In this concluding section of this overview of the energy transition I would like to offer a high-level framework for the work ahead (Figure 10). The main thrust of the my thesis is the need for as much collaboration as is possible.
The first form of collaboration is through the path of technological readiness of options to decarbonize Ireland’s energy and strengthen its resilience to threats associated with climate change. For example, in the building heating sector, it appears clear that an integrated systems approach will be the winning way, involving digital innovation as the glue to deliver a systems approach. “Behind the grid” sources of “free energy” and decarbonized utility grids might be normally viewed as competing business models. Successful customer-focused companies will be agnostic to the solutions provided and will profit from a segment approach to their business. Some of the “local” sources of energy, such as geothermal (shallow and deep) require further research and development (from government and commerce). Other technologies such as solar thermal as well proven, but require further support to deliver affordable and easy to use products for the consumer.
Another form of collaboration is in the at scale implementation of measures as they become ready for application. For example, the goal of 1 million EVs in ROI by 2030 in the Climate Action Plan will need specific regulation, subsidy, taxing and marketing and investment in the charging network to cause this to happen.
I strongly believe that there is a required for NI and ROI to work together in an energy transition coalition. Recently the NI Department of Economy, responsible for Energy Policy in the province through the devolved government, asked for information pertinent to progressing the energy transition. I completed the questionnaire and repeatedly found myself pointing out obvious opportunities to work with the ROI, particularly with respect to the state’s Climate Action Plan. Apart from sharing an island, the two countries share the same challenges, risks, and opportunities. Science and engineering research needs to further shared and progressed. Although separately regulated, the two states share electricity and natural gas grids.
The final level of collaboration for Ireland’s energy transition involves import, export and sharing of aspects with neighbors in Britain, Europe and the rest of the world (Figure 10). There is a lot to learn from each other on technology, business models and societal issues. Moreover, there is an export opportunity for Ireland to provide leadership to the rest of the world, both developed and undeveloped.
I conducted the research and wrote this piece to learn about the risks and opportunities of Ireland’s energy transition. I mean to use my role as Adjunct Full Professor of Energy Geoscience in University College Dublin to explore opportunities for integrating applied geoscience into climate mitigation and residence opportunities. Plan C Advisors is available to help company boards to consider and act on climate change risks. As a NED to Senergy Innovations Ltd, a solar thermal company, I have a vested interest in educating consumers and businesses on the huge opportunity for “free” energy from solar thermal.