There is no question that the measures needed to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with climate change have created a distinct rural/urban divide.
There are undeniably some policies which affect rural areas and farmers more than our city dwelling cousins, thanks to our dependence on cars due to inferior public transport and with homes older and more likely to be heated with fossil fuels.
While policy to reduce emissions has negatives for rural Ireland, there a number of upsides beyond ‘feel good’ environmentalism.
Long-term benefits of moving away from fossil fuels
Ireland lacks any decent fossil fuel reserves, this is a simple fact. Ever since the meagre coal mines in Leitrim were shut, we have been reliant on imports for coal.
Oil is imported from the UK, Norway with some African nations also contributing. Despite the focus on Corrib and what might be in Cork bay, we only produce around one quarter of our demand; the rest is British.
So what does all that mean? Apart from making Ireland an energy insecure country, with not even enough fossil fuels to power our electricity grid ourselves in the case of emergency, it’s all money lost.
Then there’s turf. Much is said about the supposed lunacy of shutting down our only domestic fossil fuel energy source but there’s a hard truth.
It’s undeniable that Bord na Móna was an incredible employment opportunity for a very long time, but while much is made of the Green Party’s role in closing the bogs, the fact is, peat is just a bad way to power our grid.
Peat is the least efficient of all fossil fuels as it is so wet, even when properly dried. What is effective at warming a room isn’t going to burn well in a power plant.
Likely the truth is that gas was cheaper and more efficient; government policy on peat extraction simply followed while being given the ‘easy out’ of various court cases.
If we need to wean off fossil fuel, and if doing so means keeping more money in the economy, why aren’t we? Simple… outdated thinking.
In the context of the climate, many short-sighted economists say the transition to renewables is simply too costly, entirely ignoring those supposed costs mean jobs and employment due to long-term investment in many economically deprived areas.
Jobs a world away from wealth centres like Dublin. The same short-term thinking would have seen Ardnacrusha never built. Turlough Hill would have been ridiculed.
Better to burn our future and fund other countries for meagre savings.
Where does the farmer fit in when it comes to climate?
A lot is made of our sector’s relatively large contribution to national emissions compared to other EU member states.
Yet there is opportunity in exactly that. As any reader will know, all livestock have a habit of producing dung, something seen as a waste to some, a valuable fertiliser to others and a pollutant to many.
Yet in Denmark, it’s the source of a whopping 25% of all gas in its gas grid. For context, this would be larger than Corrib’s output to ours.
30% of all slurries go through anaerobic digestors (AD) to produce this biogas. The argument traditionally has been that because we do not house our animals for as long as on the continent, it’s not a suitable technology.
This ignores both the large pig herd and chicken flock along with the fact that in suitable conditions, very little potential methane is lost from stored slurry from winter.
Then there is the fact that Ireland has one of the largest wind potentials just off our Atlantic coast which remains frustratingly untapped due to our sluggish planning and regulatory environment.
We have failed to realise the potential massive employment opportunity in manufacturing and maintenance along the west coast in the way Scottish offshore wind has.
While critics point out that wind is variable, they fail to understand is the potential for additional job creation this could lead to.
Infrastructure needed to transform that excess wind when our demand is low, particularly over winter and during the night, could offer other potential benefits not just for the climate.
The focus is often on hydrogen production from this excess wind, but the potential to create ‘green ammonia gas’, an energy store, but more interestingly to farmers, a ‘zero carbon’ fertiliser.
In fact, rooftop solar is one of the few green policies the government has gotten right.
Thanks to this, we are seeing economic activity in sales and installers and savings to farmers, the question is now why the hold-up on wind and AD?