How we can turn the deluge to our advantage

THE incessant deluge in west Cork led me to do a rough calculation of the amount of potential energy delivered to Ireland by rainfall.

It came to 40 million megawatt hours (MWH) per year, or about a quarter more than Ireland’s total electricity consumption.

Obviously only a very small part of this would be usable, but at present just 0.4% of energy comes from hydro, so clearly there is scope for considerable growth.

Large-scale hydro schemes may be environmentally destructive, but small schemes need not be and could produce useful amounts of power. For example, a flow of one cubic metre/second with a 100 metre drop would produce about 200 kilowatts (kW) net.

The beauty of hydro is consistency. Fed from a natural or artificial lake, the flow can be regulated to match demand, making it an ideal partner for wind generation. Operating the system in reverse, when there is an excess of wind energy, pumped storage maintains the ‘spare’ energy. However, at present the economics are marginal. Construction costs are high and payback times may be several decades, although this will reduce drastically if oil costs rocket.

There is clearly a case for Government initiative to overcome bureaucratic hurdles to aid planning and design, to provide grants and to procure turbines and equipment at low cost.

The public have been fooled by misleading stories in the media motivated by politics and the desire of oil companies to boost their share prices.

The fact is we are facing a real energy crisis.

Oil production is declining while world demand is increasing and, as a consequence, the present economic recession could well become a severe depression.

The Government should be working to mitigate the effects by initiating a massive increase in renewable energy projects which would provide jobs and boost the economy.

At present only about 5% of energy comes from renewables while 90% comes from imported fossil fuels.

Government policy should be to reduce fossil fuel usage and build electric railways and tramways which can be operated by renewables.

There is clearly a need to cut Government spending and increase taxation but, as usual, health and education are the victims; other public services have been cut to the bone already. Cuts in the €3 billion-a-year road budget or the introduction of road charging are out of the question. Roads and cars are a national, but suicidal, obsession.

Road-building leads to increasing volumes of traffic, more car dependency and higher oil importation. This will eventually bankrupt the country as oil prices increase, and if oil supplies cease, due to wars or other reasons, there will be complete social collapse.

We must act now before it is too late.

Michael Job

Rossnagrena

Glengarriff

Co Cork