Grant aid for all biomass systems
Tuesday August 21 2007
The introduction of the Greener Homes grant scheme in March of this year must be regarded as a major step in the right direction.
The scheme, which is administrated by Sustainable Energy Ireland (SEI), offers grants to home owners, for the installation of solar panels, heat pumps, wood-pellet boilers, wood-chip boilers, and wood-pellet stoves.
In a separate scheme, it offers grant aid for large biomass systems and for commercial and public buildings.
However, judging from the long list of regulations governing the implementation of the scheme by SEI, a number of glaring anomalies exist in relation to biomass systems and the fuels allowed to be used.
According to the regulations, only biomass systems fuelled by wood pellets and wood chips qualify for grant aid from the scheme.
With the benefit of new technology, there are now many biomass boilers that can burn a range (and even a mixture) of different biomass fuels, including wood logs and energy crop fuels.
Large biomass installations for commercial buildings are well capable of using a wide range of cheaper biomass materials, like crushed, used pallets and waste timber, plus a mixture of sawdust, bark and other biomass material from energy crops, such as miscanthus, straw, oilseed rape residue, black oats, and other energy crops -- crops that would have potential benefits for farmers.
This would also have obvious advantages to home owners and to commercial users concerned about having an ongoing supply of fuel available, as well as having access to the cheapest available biomass materials on the market.
As the availability and use of all renewable energy is still in its infancy in Ireland, the supply of sufficient sources of biomass fuel is likely to be a concern for a number of years to come. This could become a serious concern if a substantial switch to non-fossil biomass systems were to take place
It would seem reasonable to expect that SEI would take the supply of biomass materials on board when drawing up regulations to implement the scheme.
Most people would expect that the Greener Homes scheme should be operated in a manner to encourage home owners to install biomass systems, capable of burning fuels that have incurred the least carbon footprint in the process, ie, from the forest to the fire.
It is therefore ironic that the current scheme, as operated by SEI, only pays grants for biomass boilers that burn wood pellets and wood chips.
Both of those fuels are expensive because of the amount of energy used in the manufacturing process.
This in turn gives wood pellets and wood chips the highest carbon footprint of all biomass fuels.
What's even more surprising is the fact that SEI, in its wisdom, is prepared to spend lots of taxpayers' money putting SEI inspectors out on the roads to police the scheme and ensure that any system burning biomass fuel -- other than wood pellets and wood chips -- are excluded from grant aid.
Given Ireland's appalling position in relation to carbon emissions, plus the urgent need to insure Kyoto compliance -- the only logical criterion that should now be applied, is to grant aid to all biomass systems burning any type of non-fossil fuel.
The fundamental objective should be to encourage home owners and commercial users to make a complete and permanent switch away from burning oil gas and coal.
This approach would be compatible with the Clear Skies scheme operated in the UK and Northern Ireland.
To achieve this, it's important that Minister Eamon Ryan provides the extra funding that will be required to put a fully comprehensive scheme in place, which should allow SEI the opportunity to eliminate the senseless anomalies that exist with the current scheme.
Diarmuid Cohalan (energy crop grower), Gurranreigh Lissarda Co Cork.
