(New Beginnings, No.32)
Published as Peter McCarthy.
Fossil fuels – oil, coal, turf, and natural gas – are running out. In addition, they pollute the world’s atmosphere, creating the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
Conservation is one response to this challenge. We waste huge amounts of energy in gas-guzzling cars such as SUV’s, or in short car trips we could easily walk, by leaving lights or computers switched on, excessive central heating, or using clothes driers when the sun is shining etc. Long-lasting, energy-efficient light bulbs help reduce electricity consumption.
But you can’t conserve energy if you haven’t got it in the first place. Existing sources won’t last indefinitely. There is no one solution to this problem. We need to make use of all of them, according to circumstance.
Some “solutions” are not all they seem to be. Hydrogen-fuelled cars are an example. Hydrogen is clean but it costs a lot of energy to produce it from water. Battery-operated cars are also clean, and quiet, but they are re-charged with electricity from oil, coal, or gas-powered stations.
Wave, tide, and wind power: the coasts of Ireland offer huge potential for these. We have scarcely begun to tap them. There is need for more active involvement by government in enabling legislation, research and development, and start-up grants. This power is not free; no one has fully costed the deployment, maintenance, and replacement of such systems over a long period.
Biomass is a term for fuels made from crops or wood. It is possible that such crops could replace the sugar-beet of Ireland’s south-east. Used vegetable cooking oils can be recycled for fuel. Ethanol from sugarcane produces half of Brazil’s vehicle fuel. Zimbabwe has used maize oil since the Seventies. These can be mixed with ordinary diesel without the need to modify engines.
Natural gas is a relatively clean fuel, but, as traditional sources are exhausted, supplies increasingly have to be pumped very long distances, sometimes through countries that are politically unstable, or are tempted to use their control of the pipelines for political leverage.
Solar power is great during day-time in sunny climates, but the need for back-up systems remains. Solar panels have become much cheaper, but are subject to vandalism.
Nuclear power produces no carbon dioxide, but costs more than coal, gas, or wind. The cost of decommissioning out-dated nuclear power plants is much greater than originally estimated. At present rates of consumption, known supplies of uranium will last less than sixty years. Breeder reactors are highly efficient, but they produce plutonium from reprocessed spent fuel, with the risk of its being diverted for use in nuclear weapons. The disposal of nuclear waste also remains a large problem, sealed in glass and buried in mines for future generations to deal with. Mistrust, too, is a problem because of lies told to the public after the accidents at Windscale/Sellafield, Chernobyl, and other places. The chairman of the commission of inquiry into the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in the US in 1979, speaking of the public relations officials employed by the power company, said, ‘They lie even as they breathe.’
Nuclear fusion sounds like an answer to prayer. A different process from nuclear fission, it has the potential to produce immense quantities of power, leaving no radio-active waste and no plutonium. But, at the present level of research, it consumes more energy than it produces. Some scientists dismiss it as a will o’ the wisp. And political rivalry about the location of research facilities stall development work.
One large technical problem is that of storing electricity. Batteries are expensive, heavy, and polluting – they use lead, acid, and mercury – and don’t store much electricity anyway. Finding ways to store it cheaply and in large quantities could make a big difference, but are a long way off.
The biggest problems are not technical but human. One is the not-in-my-backyard syndrome. A way of overcoming this is for local cooperatives to own local energy sources. When these start helping to pay household bills, attitudes may change. A single large wind turbine may be less intrusive than several small ones, and using existing surfaces, like roofs, for solar panels may be more tolerable than free-standing systems.
Another problem is that every fuel has its lobbyists. Pressure groups promote the interests of their own product. Government needs to promote the public good vigorously in the face of vested interests which will howl their protests, each claiming to be a special case.
People who have small-scale units supplying their own homes are enthusiastic about them. When people discover that DIY energy works, they want more of it; nothing succeeds like success.
In the Catholic parish of the Nativity in Poleglass in West Belfast, a wind turbine provides power throughout the year for lighting and under-floor electric heating. It also generates a surplus which is fed into the national grid and gives the parish a worthwhile annual income.
In Ireland, we’re dawdling on the issue, even though we have much natural potential. New Zealand, similar to Ireland in many ways, is ahead of us by about twenty years. We seem afraid to innovate and to risk. Whether in Ireland, or in the world at large, we don’t have forever to sort it out.