Green Plan Ireland
Green Plan Ireland is based on a peer-reviewed scientific paper I published in the International Journal of Sustainable Energy Planning and Management, which outlines how Ireland can transition to a 100% renewable energy system without increasing the costs of energy, but while creating 100,000 additional jobs at the same time. The key steps required in a 100% renewable energy system are:
- Expanding electricity production from onshore wind, offshore wind, and solar panels
- Converting the heat supply in Irish cities from gas boilers to district heating
- Converting the individual boilers in the rural areas from coal and oil to electric heat pumps
- Converting our cars from petrol and diesel to electricity
- Producing liquid and gaseous fuels from a combination of carbon dioxide and hydrogen, which are known as synthetic fuels
Here you can download:
- A Brief Summary
- The Green Plan Ireland Paper (in pdf format)
- Original Journal Paper
- An energy flow diagram for the the 100% renewable energy scenario proposed (see links below)
- The Computer Models used in the Study
Presentation of Green Plan Ireland
In this video, I present the Green Plan Ireland study, which outlines how Ireland can transition from fossil fuels to 100% renewable energy by the year 2050. The event was kindly hosted by the IIEA in March 2016.
The energy flow diagram provided here represents the flow of energy in the 100% renewable energy scenario proposed in Green Plan Ireland. As emphasised in the study, this should be viewed as one potential 100% renewable energy scenario for Ireland and not as an ‘optimum’ scenario. An energy flow diagram is available for a more optimised 100% renewable energy scenario from the CEESA project, which focused on Denmark (see Figure 3.13 on page 57 of the main report). CEESA was a five-year research project involving more than 20 researchers across 7 different university departments or research institutions in Denmark, so the analysis is much more detailed than in Green Plan Ireland. Therefore, this energy flow diagram is over simplified compared to reality so that it is easier to understand, both in its design and its presentation. A detailed eneryg flow diagram is provided for the synthetic/electrofuels explicitly in the Green Plan Ireland study and in this journal article.