If you’ve skipped Part I and come straight here (tldr), the key point was that wind energy delivered more electricity in 2019 than was forecast in 2007 (107%). Oh, and actual demand in 2018 was down nearly 20% on forecast, indicative of the impact of the financial crisis.
If you’ve read Part I and are here for more, thanks for your perseverance. And so finally to the motivation for writing this post, which is relevant to Ireland today – literally today (23/4/2020).
After a quite technical, and somewhat tedious analysis of the factors that might determine the outcome of whether or not the wind industry would deliver on its targets, I concluded my 2007 dissertation with a couple of ‘Additional Considerations‘ (Section 3.8 on page 41):
- Ireland’s New Programme for Government: Aggressive Reduction in CO2e emissions;
- Scarcity Pricing & Constrained Oil Supply (2010 – 2015);
While you’re busy sniggering about 2, let me take you down memory lane and back to when the boom was getting boomier and the Green Party had finally gotten itself into government, entering coalition with Fianna Fail in the summer of 2007. Little did we realise (or at least most of us, more in Part III) that the canary in the coalmine had just died and the wheels were getting ready to come off in catastrophic fashion.
By strange cosmic coincidence, the same week SEAI publishes its 2020 Renewable Energy Update, prompting me to go back to my 2007 dissertation, the Green Party is negotiating for a place in Ireland’s next government, publishing today ‘a response to the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael joint framework document‘. I had completely forgotten, like most I suspect, that the 2007 programme for government contained a commitment to reducing Greenhouse Gas emissions by 3% per annum. Sound familiar?
The Green Party response above contains 17 questions and the first is:
- Will you commit to an average annual reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of at least 7%?
Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions in Ireland are around 60 million tonnes a year, with a significant proportion coming from agriculture. However, the largest proportion comes from energy (transport/heat/electricity). The chart below compares actual to the 2007 programme for government and what a 7% per annum reduction would look like if it started next year (thanks to covid, it already has).
The little yellow triangle below is the contribution made by the current target to have a zero-carbon electricity system by 2040. The Climate Action Plan calls for 70% renewable electricity by 2030 and 1 million electric vehicles and 600 thousand domestic heat pumps, which will increase electricity demand but eliminate carbon if the electricity is generated by renewables.
What is interesting to look at from my 2007 thesis is the calculation of the grid carbon intensity required to meet that 3% per annum reduction in GHGs in the power sector, falling below 300 gCO2e/kWh by 2020.
The latest figure from SEAI for 2018 put it at 375 gCO2e/kWh, so nearly 40% higher. In 2007 I estimated that the amount of wind generation required to achieve that target was around twice my 3.4GW estimate under the 33.3% RES-E target, which would have been considered a very ambitious target indeed.
Could we have installed 5.7GW of wind by 2020 if we’d stuck to our guns?
The recently updated scenario planning document published by Eirgrid in the Coordinated Action scenario has 9GW of onshore wind, 4GW of offshore wind, and 3.5GW of solar in 2040, achieving 90% RES-E, still 10% off the target.
Given the ambition of the renewables industry in Ireland today, I don’t think we need to be intimidated by a 7%pa reduction in carbon emissions, but I’ll discuss that further under the second of my ‘Additional Considerations‘, the impact of an economic crisis on those ambitions: Part III…
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