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What ya going to do
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From Fine Gael Ireland reliant on imported fuel due to Govt inaction - Coveney
Fine Gael Spokesman on Energy, Simon Coveney TD, today criticised the lack of progress by the Government on its Energy White Paper, which is leaving Ireland with an overexposure to imported fuel and at risk of energy supply shortages.
Seriously what does he want them to do. We don’t have Oil and our Gas supplies are even with Corrib not enough. Or energy insecurity is a problem of geography not government.
Seriously what does he want them to do. We don’t have Oil and our Gas supplies are even with Corrib not enough. Or energy insecurity is a problem of geography not government.
Would it have killed you to look up the Fine Gael website to see what proposals Fine Gael have for energy security?
Like what? blending bio-fuels with petrol? Petrol can only be added with about 5% biofuels. Now to increase the amount of biofuels we burn we would have to cultivate large tracts of land solely for biofuel. Which would involve 2 things. 1 increase in the price of food and inflation and not result in a drop of oil importation of all that much.
Also just to put some numbers on it. If Ireland wanted to replace the roughly 5.1 billion litres of oil we import for transport. We would have to cover 70% of the total land area of the country in rapeseed (63% currently agri). Imagine what that would do to inflation.
But lets just take the 5% figure saw 5% of fuel was biofuel. That means the 95% of our car fuel is still imported. Which does not do much for our exposure.
That would require about 250,000 hectares of rapeseed of 6% of our agricultural land or 66% of our tillage land. While doable imagine what that would do to a loaf of bread comparing to what it would do to lessen our exposure to energy security.
I could go on about wind production as well but I think the car example is enough to show
Simon, the first thing would be to make some progress with the white paper itself. After all the government has the taxpayers cash to enable consult the experts and see what our options might be. I would also suggest that targeting some tax incentives into R&D in the area of renewable technologies would be useful. The Danes have done well from developing wind tech, we could take a lead in tidal and wave technology. If we can give property tax breaks that allow people to write off the cost of a property they’ve simply bought against all other income irrespective of source then why not for something like this?