Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Pat Kenny Show on Newstalk. The Irish Academy of Engineering has published two reports yesterday calling for significant changes to our energy security planning, which fly in the face of our legally binding commitment to eliminate carbon emissions. And to talk about all of this, I'm joined now by a member of the Academy, the chair of the Energy and Climate Action Committee, Eamon O'Reilly.
Eamon, good morning and welcome. Thank you, Pat. Good morning to you.
Chapter 2: What significant changes to energy security planning are proposed in the reports?
Now, can you set the scene for us in terms of the likely energy shortages over the coming years because of what's happening with the war on Iran?
I suppose it is impossible to predict what's going to happen. I think that's the essence actually behind our reports. There is enormous uncertainty in the future. There has been enormous uncertainty in the past. And it is a bit like house insurance.
If you can get along hopefully through your life without insuring your house, all of a sudden there's a fire and you regret not having house insurance. Energy security is like that. So for a country like Ireland with such a huge dependence on fossil fuels, 83% of our energy, it's imported, it's gas and it's oil.
And we have zero energy security stores that we can access when we need to in the worst circumstances for gas. We have a lot for oil, for heating and for transport, but we've also almost nothing for electricity.
Now, often it'll be pointed out by Airgrid and others that sometimes more than 50% of our electricity on a given day, where there's a bit of wind and the sun is shining, 50% of it comes from renewables. Now, that's fine. And with battery storage, that might kind of see us through, but we're by no means there yet.
We certainly aren't. And as you mentioned, air grid, air grid have a standard that they have to adhere to. Three hours loss of load expectation. What that translates into is 99.97% certainty that air grid can provide all of the electricity needed for all of the demand throughout the year. So at that level of supply obligation, you have to make sure that you're able to supply
to meet all of that demand. And every year in the winter, they come out and say how they're ready to do that.
Now, we keep hearing about how well wind does in, you know, wintry, some windy days. However, a lot of the energy that's consumed is consumed for heating, boilers and so on and so forth. And that is not going to change really that quickly, is it?
It isn't, Pat. And there is very frequently in discourse, the terms electricity and energy are used interchangeably and they're definitely not interchangeable. So, about 80% of the energy that we use is in the form of fossil fuels. It's the petrol, the diesel in transport, it's the gas heating your house, it's the kerosene heating in rural Ireland away from the gas network.
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Chapter 3: How does Ireland's dependence on fossil fuels affect its energy security?
Therefore, is this not our version of drill, baby, drill?
No, it's not, because the coal-fired station of Moneypoint was not being operated all that much. It was there as a generation of last resort. So you might remember back in 2021, there was a little crisis coming into the winter. There could have been shortages. What did the government do or what did air grid and the regulator do?
They immediately went out and they procured a whole load of temporary, they call it temporary emergency generation. So there's quite a lot of that has been built. There was a scheme put in to keep Moneypoint retained, retained available in extremis. So all we are saying is keep it available for longer than 2029, which is what the current plan is. Keep it for at least a decade.
If you can manage to keep it there on coal, keep it on coal.
Now, the question of, you know, a huge yard to store the coal that would give you a 90 days supply back then, it wouldn't be anything like 90 days now, the same amount of coal because we use far more energy than we did then. What about running it on oil, on heavy oil? Would that be any better? Do we have the capacity to keep Moneypoint going on heavy oil?
Well, when they shut it down on the coal, it is available to operate today on heavy fuel oil. They've got two tanks down there. ESB, in fact, got planning permission to build another two tanks. So what we're saying, if it's not possible, if it's too late at this stage to go back on coal, at least build those extra two tanks.
And that will give you about 20 to 22 days of capacity to run the station at full output as and if needed.
Now, that fuel oil that would be stored down there, that could be seen as part of a strategic supply, isn't that so? And it might never be used.
Well, that is the point. So an awful lot of the stocks of oil held by Nora for transport and eating, to back that up, those don't get used. Just in the last week, actually, the extent of the crisis can be measured by Nora are now putting some of their stocks out into the market. So lots of countries with these strategic stores are doing that to make sure that the oil is available that we need
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of Ireland's energy supply obligations?
Well, by the time they might get to that, there will be an awful lot of more offshore wind built, fixed bottom offshore wind, not floating. So at the moment, there's about 3,500 megawatts which have state contracts in place. So Codling, for example, ESB have 900 megawatts off the southwest coast. And there's possibly up to 20,000 more coming after that.
By the time you've built all of this fixed bottom offshore wind, I doubt if Ireland can ever need much more than that.
Okay, now what's the timescale on that fixed offshore wind?
We're supposed to have 5,000 megawatts by 2030. We clearly won't. We might have it by 2035. It could even go on longer.
So you're saying Moneypoint is needed until 2035, say?
We will need always some form of generation where you burn something as the generation source of last resort. We're saying Moneypoint has the advantage on coal that you can't get a large stock of coal into a yard.
What will it do for us in terms of our bills? If you have that kind of backup, I mean, and the possibility that you can manage, you know, if you're being blackmailed by the international markets and you've got this kind of backup, what would it mean for our bills?
My sense, whatever, how costs feed into bills is a completely different discussion. But I think the cost of running Moneypoint on coal will be lower than the cost of procuring brand new gas turbine power plants, which is what Airgrid are planning to do. Gas is clean, coal is dirty. Well, it depends on what you define. Both of them are greenhouse gas emissions.
Coal possibly has, probably has about twice the greenhouse gas emissions of gas. But if you're not burning it all that often, it actually doesn't matter. Money Point is an old plant. It's 40 years old. It's fully depreciated or should be fully depreciated. The cost of running Money Point should not be anywhere near as high as a brand new plant that you might procure.
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