Enlightened Transition - Introduction

THIS IS A DRAFT - SOME STATISTICS MISSING!


Motto: "I can see clearly now' (the rain has gone!)

The economy bounces back, driven by investment in low energy infrastructure changes, renewables and development and sales of technology to make energy efficiency painless. 50% of the resources of the country are used for the transition to an ultra-low carbon economy, a future similar to that of the UK's rebuilding program after the 2nd World War. (?what proportion were used by the building boom??). The key energy assumption is that overall energy use remains level with rapid gains in efficiency meeting increasing demand. There is a rapid move from oil and gas to electricity and a rapid increasing in renewables both for supply to the grid and for own use. Additional interconnectors allow us to buy and supply to the EU electricity market.

This is an optimistic scenario that explores the idea that the loss of the construction sector could be replaced with long and short-term investment in a move to sustainable energy. This includes not just renewable generation, energy storage and energy efficiency technology but also the mechanisms to encourage a swift switch from fossil fuels to renewables.

To enter this scenario, we believe a short sharp shock is required in order for us to understand our vulnerability and the urgent necessity of securing our energy supply. In this scenario an explosion of the gas pipeline in Poland just before Christmas 2008 is the trigger. This gives focus to those trying to resolve the economic crisis - rather than trying to fix the problem, they put in place structures that will enable a more desirable future.

In this scenario, we recognise that the future for energy in Ireland is electricity. A significant proportion of transport and home heating will come from electricity so while overall energy use declines in the short term as we use it more effectively, the requirement for electricity grows. We focus our attention on our strengths which is wind primarily and potentially wave and tidal. Biofuel production is increased but is a niche market for agriculture and commercial road transport. By building high capacity interconnectors to Europe (and potentially North Africa) we sell wind at times of plenty and purchase electricity from Europe to boost supply at other times.

The government has set a figure of 30% of our electricity from wind by 2020. In 2006 our capacity was 5.5GW and we used 24 billion kilowatts in 2006. As wind is intermittent, to reach 33% of our electricity from renewables, mostly from wind, we will require three times that in capacity or roughly 6GW of wind. If each windmill is 1GW (although larger ones are being built) and we have almost 1GW already installed, that will be 5000 windmills or 417 per year or 8 per week, every week, until then. In this scenario we go all out for wind building both onshore and offshore wind and the first policy to facilitate this is to create a real-time pricing market to encourage use of electricity when it is cheap (windy) and shift loads when it is expensive. In order to encourage support for installations by local people, all planning includes a sinking fund for the decommissioning of the turbines at end of life.

While Ireland cannot act unilaterally, we can seek to be a leader in creating a secure economy with stable energy prices and a plentiful supply of electricity.

Key Characteristics

• Energy is expensive but stable is supply and price.
• Labour is expensive
• Credit is cheap
• Raw materials are increasingly expensive
• Transport is more expensive
• Globalisation of some goods/services no longer beneficial.
• Success measures are long term
• The future is an electron economy
  

Risks

• Worldwide recession stops projects.
  
• Continued shortage of credit prevents rapid investment.
  
• Persistence of Business as Usual view of the future makes change slow and difficult to implement
• High capacity interconnector to EU important for this scenario so timing of supergrid is critical.
• Changes are not rolled out in a coordinated way. eg. if public transport is not an option people must continue to use the car. Until real-time pricing comes into effect, wind cannot be increased.
  

Opportunities

• New businesses emerge to take advantage of new infrastructure.
• energy productivity
• energy production
• energy storage
• energy transportation
• energy arbitrage

Policies

• Security of energy supply more important than best price.
• Investment in renewables is not subsidised but is enabled by:
  
• reduced planning restrictions
• guaranteed connection to the grid
• guaranteed energy market
• Focus on creating an infrastructure suitable for true sustainable development.

Related Links:
UK and Ireland plans for offshore wind - http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_1012056.sht
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Windpower in Ireland - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland

Future of Horse Sports in Ireland

I had an opportunities to speak briefly to Joe Walsh, Chairman of Horse Sport Ireland on monday, thanks to a win in an Amateur Show jumping competition. So I quickly put together a review of what I felt were the risks and opportunities for horse sports (excluding racing) in Ireland under an Enlightened Transition scenario.

In summary:

Risks:

Costs of keeping horses, including feed, bedding, grazing, transport and services all increasing.
Costs of competing, particularlly transport, are increasing.
Horse sports have a high carbon footprint.
Risk of losing much of the grass roots of the sport through rising costs at a time when disposable income is decreasing.

Opportunities:

Horses are an economy in themselves, supporting a wide range of products and services, and equestrian sports such as eventing, show jumping, dressage, long distance riding, carraige driving and trotting are undertaken by children and adults of all ages (61 year old Ian Millar was part of silver medal show jumping team at the Olympics) and of all abilities and capabilities.
Ireland could produce horses to international level more cheaply than on the continent due to our climate, population density and small size. We could become a base for training horses up to the top levels of sport.
Equestrian villages could provide lower cost base for horse addicted people to live.
High Tech Equestrian centres and use of Technology to bring competitions and training to the horse rather than travelling horses.
Establish the Irish Horse Brand - the best built horses in the world?

I would hope to have to opportunities to discuss these ideas with others involved in horse sports in Ireland and to explore the other scenarios at a future date.

FULL REPORT: Download pdf here.

Introduction to Energy Scenarios Ireland 2

In looking to help people understand how the future might be different from today, we could have made a prediction about what that future holds. To do this we would first have had to reach a compromise between us about what the future would be like. Then we would have had to adjust that future to within the bounds of what we thought others would find credible, after all there is no point in making a prediction that nobody believes. This would have limited the areas we could explore by not going outside the popular comfort zone. In the end our damped down prediction would have read something like "After a period of readjustment, Ireland will return to a period of strong economic growth...". Just what everyone wants to hear.

Or, we could go ahead and make a prediction. Human nature being what it is, the most common reaction would be to focus on the areas of disagreement. A heated discussion would follow that might change a few opinions, but make little progress towards identifying risks and opportunities for the future and improve long term decision making.

So instead we have chosen to continue to use Scenario Planning to explore a range of possible futures, none of which we expect to reflect what actually happens, but instead explore different aspects of our future. Our experience developing Energy Scenarios Ireland version 1, was that it is much easier to lay aside our inbuilt assumptions and consider a unexpected future if it is not being touted as a prediction. It circumvents the long process of convincing others that we are right and we can go straight to applying our collective imaginations to exploring the risks and opportunities for that scenario. Everyone can then apply what they have learned to their own vision of the future. Looking at the scenarios collectively helps in developing and testing plans - if a plan will only work in one scenario, building in more flexibility should be considered.


We are, in fact, going to explore "After a period of readjustment..." with four scenarios, that are similar but not exactly the same as those in the previous version of Energy Scenarios Ireland.

Read more about the previous version here: http://www.energyscenariosireland.com

Business As Usual - we briefly look at a short period of readjustment followed by a return to strong economic growth. What might have to happen in order for this fairy tale to come true!
Enlightened Transition - considers a longer downturn but an immediate focus on increasing energy productivity and moving to renewable sources of energy. This leads to economic recovery driven by investment in these new areas. Not without pain for those dependent on Business As Usual.
Fair Shares - we wait longer before making a commitment to move away from fossil fuel and therefore have less resources with which to do so. Recovery takes longer to start and improvement is slow.
Enforced Localisation - we continue to be optimistic about the future until there are few options left but to return to a subsistence economy.

Scenarios are not predictions. In order to explore these different scenarios we are making assumptions about the wider world that include:
- no sudden and significant climate change
- no sudden and significant increase in terrorism
- no pandemics in either humans or livestock
- no discover of direct replacement for oil that is cheap and quickly scaleable
- Ireland cannot act unilaterally to any extent, so the rest of the world follows broadly the same scenario