Renewable solutions open up opportunities

John Reilly, Head of Powergen Development at Bord na Móna, explains how its own renewable transition is helping Ireland to tackle climate change and making a positive local difference.

Recently, demonstrations in cities around the world drew attention to the fact that, whether you live in Dublin, Denver or Dhaka, climate change is an issue for everyone on this planet. This united, unequivocal demand from the UN, the scientific community and the demonstrators is for everyone to reduce their carbon emissions footprint and help minimise the worst impacts of climate change.

For Ireland generally, and for us in Bord na Móna, we have a responsibility to play our part on an issue that in actuality presents us as many opportunities as it does challenges. The challenges are well rehearsed, less so the opportunities and trends that demonstrate global capital is moving in the direction of clean energy. Only recently in the United States for instance the Rockefeller Brothers Fund announced plans to divest itself of more than $50 billion in fossil fuel assets and instead invest in clean energy.

This is significant as Ireland is ideally placed to attract substantial investment from the multinational companies that want to operate in the greener, cleaner low carbon environment that we can provide. As for individual Irish companies, such as Bord na Móna, by moving into the renewable energy space we can deliver a sustainable future both for our employees and shareholders, as well as contributing to key strategic national energy policy objectives, such as decarbonising our energy system and enhancing security of supply.

Context

In Ireland, a substantial portion of our efforts to tackle climate change takes place within a European energy policy that aims for secure, affordable and sustainable energy supplies. In practical terms, this means the radical decarbonisation of all European economies, with action directed across many areas including the three energy sectors in electricity, transport and heating.

This policy response reflects the complexity of the issues involved. It follows that the response of companies and individuals to the challenge has to involve a broad range of measures from lowering consumption, decarbonising our energy systems and seeking new more sustainable ways of doing business.

As a company mandated to develop elements of Ireland’s indigenous energy resources, Bord na Móna has a special responsibility in this area. This longstanding responsibility drove the company’s vision, ‘A Contract with Nature’, that sets out our commitment to environmentally and commercially sustainable operations. This approach found the support of our Board of Directors, who authorised the investments necessary to drive the transition to an increasingly low carbon operating model with an ambition to ultimately become an all-island leader in renewable energy production.

Having embarked on this significant journey and with a clear focus on reducing our carbon footprint, the first part of the Bord na Móna response to this issue was to measure, monitor and report the company’s own energy consumption and then see how this can be reduced. A range of energy efficiency measures including, amongst others, asset management and operational measures, were adopted across the company resulting in substantial financial and energy savings.

Arising out of its internal work in this area, the company is now also working with a number of external partners and stakeholders to emulate its own progress in this area while helping to promote a focus on energy efficiency measures in homes and in workplaces across Ireland.

Also on the domestic heating front, Bord na Móna is developing a range of renewable fuel products including a number of wood-based products such as the biomass briquette. Product development in this area is informed by the approaching extension of the smoky-fuel ban, which is in line with our own commitments to lower carbon outputs generally.

Electricity

Beyond energy efficiency and consumer product development, electricity generation is a major part of Bord na Móna’s journey towards a sustainable future.

Energy sector emissions currently account for just over 20 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions at present. With transport and agriculture amounting to over 50 per cent of total emissions and abatement options limited in these sectors, decarbonising our electric power system must be a key focus of energy policy in the coming decade if Ireland is to meet its international obligations on climate change. Bord na Móna fully supports the transition to a fully decarbonised electric power system. In fact, the company will pass an important milestone on this journey next year when over 50 per cent of the electricity produced by the company’s generating assets will be derived from a variety of renewable sources.

Amongst its energy assets, the company’s wind energy developments are perhaps the most well known component of its renewable energy portfolio, with almost 130MW of installed capacity on the Irish grid and another 90MW in construction. Much of the company’s 80,000 hectares of peat lands are now reaching the end of their peat-producing life but possess great potential for wind energy development. Ireland has already benefited from the decades of employment and energy security provided by the peat resources in the company’s land bank. We can now renew the mandate for Bord na Móna’s land bank by realising its potential to supply a new, renewable source of indigenous energy to the Irish grid.

A rather less well known, but still significant, part of Bord na Móna’s plans to decarbonise our activities comes from its ever increasing generation of renewable electricity using biomass and landfill gas. The steady annual increase in biomass co-fuelling of the company’s 128MW power station at Edenderry in County Offaly, which was originally designed as a peat fired generator, will next year see the plant produce over 30 per cent of its output from biomass, with plans to further expand this in the coming years.

This has resulted in a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from the plant, which has contributed to the marked reduction of emissions from the electricity sector in recent years. This expansion has also seen the company work hard to develop an indigenous biomass supply chain in Ireland, an area that has the potential to bring with it considerable employment opportunities for the Irish agri-sector.

With our focus on diversification of renewable energy supplies the company added another significant piece of infrastructure to its generating portfolio this year with the opening of a 5MW landfill-gas power plant in County Kildare. This plant, which is located at our Drehid waste management facility, further underpins the company’s ability to deliver reliable supplies of renewable electricity to the grid and will produce enough green energy to power up to 8,500 homes annually.

Research

On the research front, the company is currently involved in a number of projects in areas such as energy storage and solar photovoltaic generation, that in time could further augment our ability to deliver renewable energy supplies and contribute to the decarbonisation of the electricity system.

Perhaps even more significantly, international research suggests that young, regenerating bogs are highly effective in capturing greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere. The company’s ecology team is now conducting research to measure the phenomenon as it applies to the 12,000 hectares of bogs that have been rehabilitated by Bord na Móna in recent years and to examine the potential for these and other bogs to act as significant sinks in the future.

Taken together, our plans will see Bord na Móna drive down its energy consumption through an increased focus on energy efficiency measures, decrease its carbon footprint and become one of the biggest producers of renewable energy on the island of Ireland by 2030.

Making such a major contribution to the national climate change effort poses a significant challenge for the company given our carbon footprint at present, but would represent a remarkable achievement. Still it is an objective that we can scarcely afford to miss.

As President John F Kennedy, speaking on a different matter, said: “There are risks and costs to a programme of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.” I would also add, that when it comes to climate change, we must remember not just the risks and costs but also the incredible opportunities that dealing with this challenge presents to us as individuals, Irish companies and as a Nation.

Bord na Móna Plc
Main Street
Newbridge
Co. Kildare
Tel: +353 (0)45 439000
Web: www.bordnamona.ie