Our love affair with the car continues

THERE was a time in Ireland when people made a wonder of the fact that households in America could have one, two, or even three cars.

But, we’re fast heading down that road. Some of our better-off people have even passed out the Yanks with multiple cars, SUVs and other vehicles on their driveways.

The number of cars in Ireland has more than doubled in less than 20 years. A fact that did not receive the kind of attention it deserved in 2007 is that we’ve gone over the one car per house mark. Residences here now have an average 1.2 cars.

Despite all the warnings about greenhouse gases et al, the whole transport area continues to be a massive guzzler of energy and producer of harmful emissions. The transport sector in Ireland recorded a 7.1% growth in emissions in 2006 over 2005. Transport now accounts for 35% of energy-related emissions.

And there are other interesting statistics. Road freight, for example, experienced the largest growth in transport energy use since 1990, increasing by 255%. Private car transport increased by 119% over the same period.

During 2006, private car ownership per 1,000 population rose by 4.5%, resulting in an increased car ownership of 420 cars per 1,000 people. This translates into 1.2 cars per permanently occupied dwelling in 2006, a 54% increase on 1990.

Unsurprisingly then, the Green Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Eamon Ryan admitted that, even without the spectre of climate change, we will have to alter how we travel and how we fuel that travel. “With oil at record prices and the peak in global oil production on its way, we will have to change our ways. Inaction is not an option,” he said.

But will we change? Government policy is still heavily road transport orientated, as instanced by the building of major new roads and no apparent policy to use the railway network as a means of moving freight and thereby reducing heavy trucks on the roads.

In addition to growth in energy use last year, energy use in the transport sector grew by 167% between 1990 and 2006. Factors contributing to this growth include a three and a half fold increase in road freight transport energy use, a more than doubling of private car use and more than two and a half times increase in energy use by air transport.

Every town in Ireland now has a traffic problem and inadequate parking facilities because of too many cars and other vehicles. Not enough is being done to encourage people leave their cars at home and walk, cycle, or use alternative means of transport.

However, people not living in our major cities are, of course, only too well aware of the lack of public transport in many parts of the country.

The fact that the world has woken up to the need for alternative sources of energy is listed among the top stories of 2007, says a leading international science magazine. Most experts now agree that sources of oil will diminish in the coming decades and multi-national corporations are going to great trouble to find new wells.

Here at home, we’ve the ongoing debate about wind and solar energy and a growing number of turbines in elevated ground around the country.

Could we yet see a time when solar panels will be as common on the roofs of houses in Ireland as TV aerials once were? Renewable energy use in Ireland grew by 15% during 2006. Wind energy experienced the highest growth in 2006, up by 46%, contributing 5% to Ireland’s total energy requirements for the year.

The unnervingly high price of oil, along with the increasingly intensive drilling to get it, has suddenly pushed renewable power squarely into the mainstream, according to the US-published Discover magazine.

In September, Chevron announced the discovery of a field containing up to 15 billion barrels of oil beneath the Gulf of Mexico, touting it as “a platform for growth for years to come”.

Just renting the drill rig cost Chevron and its partners more than $200,000 a day. The results suggest that oil from the new reservoir, called Jack 2, could cost three to four times as much to extract as oil from traditional locations, including rigs on land.

It’s well and truly accepted that the days of cheap oil are over. In 2006, oil prices hit a record high, $77 a barrel in the summer. Prices have eased since then, but the relief is probably temporary, according to Discover.

Oil consumption is growing rapidly in China and India as their middle classes develop energy-consuming the habits their counterparts in Europe and America have long enjoyed. These two, oil-poor economic giants are buying up oil interests in places like Nigeria.

Meanwhile, our love affair with the car continues and it will be interesting to see how biofuels and the new, hybrid cars catch on here.