Energy Regulation?

national | sci-tech | opinion/analysis Tuesday December 23, 2003 19:06 by Sean Crudden - Cooley Environmental and Health Group sean at cooleyehg dot com Jenkinstown, Dundalk, Co Louth. 042 93 71310

Is the System for Electricity Supply Working?

Reports about power generation and supply are few and far between in Ireland. What is going on? Is the future in safe hands? What should be done? Just a few elementary suggestions.

Electricity - Projections and Provision for Future Needs

The article "Electricity contracts must be signed today" in The Irish Times (231203) reinforces impressions of a pygmy response by the Commissioner for Energy Regulation and the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources to pressing and urgent needs to develop national capacity in the area of power generation.

We read that the firm scheduled to build the (next?) 400 megawatt plant (at Tynagh, Co Galway) is Turkish company Gamma Construction.

The consultation document "Options for Future Renewable Energy Policy - Targets and Programs" (from the Department) suggested, we read, that renewable energy should account for 13 - 20% of overall energy output by 2010 and by 15 - 30% by 2020. Only?

Concerns by ESB National Grid have caused a halt for wind energy connections.

I am a member of the Progressive Democrats myself and have been since 1987 and I believe in competition and a free market. But (and I don’t really know much about it) I think that attempts to "deregulate" electricity supply and introduce competition into the market have resulted in fragmentation and a loss of capacity to plan and carry out development in a cohesive and effective manner.

I think there is a necessity for a (state-guaranteed?) electricity provider which will have expertise and capacity to provide networks and supply into the future. Ireland, I think, is too small a market for competition to be effective. There is already current speculation that this is true in the general retail sector (e.g. why are shop margins rising so fast for retail goods such as milk?).

There should be some effort both financial and otherwise put into consideration of the problem of energy "storage" which would, possibly, take pressure off the distribution system and facilitate greater essential development of wind energy resources. Chemical methods may be possible only on a small scale but gravitational methods might provide a meaty answer to this fundamental problem?

Finally let me point out that in a "green" country like Ireland "bio-mass" is the obvious way to convert sunlight energy to other uses - such as electricity production. More glamorous topics such a "photo-voltaic" methods or "solar-heating" are likely to be far less effective in a quantitative sense.