The renewable energy issue is gaining momentum all the time in Northern Ireland, as we strive to advance renewable resources and technologies to meet our energy demands.
There has been a steady increase in investment in renewable energy here in recent times, and we are on track to meet our target of 12% electricity consumption from indigenous sources by 2012.
In addition to meeting this target, Northern Ireland is mindful of making its contribution to the proposed Renewable Energy Directive, which will set challenging targets for renewable energy consumption across the European Union.
Meeting these targets is important, as is reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions, however Northern Ireland has another vital reason for building up indigenous renewables. This is to enhance security of supply. With 98% of our energy needs met by imported fossil fuels, at the end of long gas pipelines from Europe, Northern Ireland must seek to produce as much of its own energy as possible.
The Electrical Grid Study completed earlier this year, showed that Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland can produce up to 42% renewable electricity, provided there is significant upgrading of the grid infrastructure. That work is taking place at the moment, to ensure we have the right balance of economic and environmental factors, as we progress our energy strategy.
While renewable electricity is, and will remain a key element of Northern Ireland’s sustainable energy policy, we must also now look beyond it towards work on renewable heat.
Much of Northern Ireland remains off the gas grid and, as such, is reliant on high greenhouse gas emitting oil-fired heating. Our own studies have shown that there is an opportunity for the development of renewable heat here. The Northern Ireland Executive must now turn its attention towards this matter, drawing on national level work on heat undertaken by BERR and discussed in the consultation on the UK Renewable Energy Strategy.
With energy costs currently increasing all the time, more and more people are considering the alternatives to fossil fuels. DETI has recently reached the planned end of a renewable technology domestic grant scheme called ‘Reconnect’. Demand for renewable heat was high as early evaluation of Reconnect shows; of £6.5m in grants issued to date, 92% have been used for the installation of renewable heat technologies: primarily solar water heating, while almost 30% have been given for wood fuelled boilers and 8% for ground source heat pumps.
A local property developer recently took the innovative step of constructing a housing development of eco-homes. These rely on biomass district heating, which is supplied by short rotation coppice willow. Demand was high for these homes, with substantial queues awaiting their release to make a purchase.
It is therefore evident that there is a great appetite for renewable alternatives to oil. It is now up to the Executive to support this with legislation and policies which encourage the development of local supply chains to provide security of supply for renewable heat technologies.
To date, Northern Ireland has relied primarily on wind energy to meet our renewable targets and, while building significantly on this, we must look further into the future to optimise the use of other renewable resources and technologies.
Balcas, one of Northern Ireland’s leading wood products suppliers, is an exemplar of how we must advance our use of renewables.
The company, based in Enniskillen in the west of Northern Ireland, has installed a combined heat and power plant (CHP). It uses surplus sawdust and woodchips to generate 2.7MW of electricity and 10MW of heat for its own use, in addition to a wood pellet fuel for sale to the public, which generates a further 30MW of heat. The electricity and heat produced by the CHP supplies almost all of Balcas’ requirements – resulting in reduced energy costs. The wood pellets provide an environmentally friendly energy fuel at a price competitive with heating oil (the primary heat fuel in Northern Ireland). The pellets were also used as fuel for the wood pellet boilers, supported by ‘Reconnect’.
Tidal energy is another area with great potential here. Northern Ireland benefits from some valuable tidal flows and it is specifically the tidal flows generated at Strangford Lough, on the east coast of County Down, that have been making renewable energy news recently.
SeaGen, a 1.2MW tidal generation system, was installed into the Lough in April of this year. A period of commissioning and testing is now underway, in advance of the device feeding electrical power to the Northern Ireland grid. It is expected to generate sufficient, clean, renewable electricity for some 1000 homes here.
The project could also provide the technology for harnessing other tidal hotspots off our coast, enabling us to significantly reduce our dependence on imports of increasingly expensive oil.
SeaGen is the largest commercial scale tidal generating system in the world. The project is therefore not just significant for Northern Ireland, but an important milestone for tidal generation internationally.
Improving security of energy supply and reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a must for Northern Ireland and renewable energy has a crucial part to play in this.
I am committed to ensuring that we create longer-term renewable solutions to meet our energy demands which can also place Northern Ireland at the forefront of the EU drive on renewable energy.
