Failure to address crucial energy issue
Monday June 04 2007
HOW odd that the two most crucial issues of the 21st century, peak oil and climate change, hardly got a look-in during the elections.
In Irish politics, it seems, it is only when a situation deteriorates into a full-blown crisis that action is taken and then, very often, too little too late. Nobody is found to be responsible "'Oh, this government wasn't in power then!") and we hear instead things like, "Who could have predicted this?" and "Who could have guessed!", and "Nobody could have foreseen!"
Well, there are three things that can be foreseen with great certainty. First, the world is inevitably approaching the point where oil supplies will peak, before declining thereafter at a significant rate. The only uncertainty is when it will happen, and the experts reckon that it will happen almost certainly inside ten years and very likely in five, during the term of the next government.
Second, the economic impact of Peak Oil in terms of fuel shortages combined with steeply increasing oil and gas prices will be a shock, especially to this state which successive governments have allowed to become exceptionally dependent on imported oil and gas.
Third, the acceptance of the reality of climate change severely limits the available responses to peak oil. Coal, for instance, is out ('clean coal', even with all of its problems, will not arrive before peak oil, and it may never arrive).
The new government therefore needs to answer some urgent questions. If 33pc of our electricity is to come from renewables, where will the other 67pc come from? How many thousands of wind turbines will we need and where will they be, and how are we going to manage supply shortages (when there is less wind than needed) and excesses (when there is more wind than we need)? How many thousands of square miles of elephant grass are we to plant to feed our power stations, and what fraction of our electricity supply will this meet? How many thousands of square miles of oil seed rape are we to plant to fuel our vehicles, and what fraction of our needs will this meet? And perhaps above all, why do we allow our energy policy to be decided by an accident at a badly designed and recklessly managed power station in a run-down totalitarian state 21 years ago?
Dargle Wood
Knocklyon
Dublin 16
