Contentious plans for a €20m windfarm near a small village in west Clare have been put on hold.

The move follows a series of submissions by locals, including action groups, along with An Taisce, Birdwatch Ireland, and the Department of the Environment.

Clare Winds Ltd is seeking planning for the 13–turbine windfarm, 4km from the village of Kilmihil. On completion, the site would have the capacity to power 14,270 households, the applicants claim.

The tip height of the turbines is 450ft high — more than 50 ft higher than Dublin’s Spire.

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An Taisce has launched a legal challenge to the UK government’s decision to grant planning permission for a nuclear power plant on the Bristol Channel.
The heritage group said it had begun judicial proceedings in London to challenge the legality of UK secretary of state Ed Davey’s decision’s to grant permission to build and operate a nuclear station at Hinkley Point, 150 miles from the Irish coast.
Transboundary impacts
In legal papers issued to the court yesterday, An Taisce challenges the legal compliance of the decision with the EU’s environmental impact assessment directive and the UK’ s own regulations on transboundary impacts and consultation.
“Despite the nuclear power plant being nearer to the coast of Ireland than it is to Leeds, the UK decided not to consult with the Irish public about the decision before it granted consent in March,” An Tai s c e said in a statement.
“The first time many Irish people learned about the nuclear power plant proposal was when the decision was announced.
“Their vie ws were not , therefore, taken into consideration as part of the UK government’s decision and assessment process.”
The Irish Times
2 May 2013
EOIN BURKE–KENNEDY

SE FIE’s challenge through the Espoo Convention

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GLOBAL suppliers of energy equipment are being courted to establish manufacturing bases in Ireland as part of plans for multi–billion euro investments in wind energy in the midlands.

Suppliers from around the world attended a conference in Tullamore, Co Offaly, yesterday to hear how the midlands could adopt German and Danish models by manufacturing and assembling the materials for the windfarms locally. About 30 companies and 450 delegates attended.

Two competing firms – Eddie O’Connor’s Mainstream Renewable Power and US–owned Element Power – are advancing plans for massive windfarms that aim to export electricity to the UK to help it meet demanding renewable energy targets by 2020.

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FIE has asked Local authority members around Ireland to table motions requiring the Minister for the Environment to allow consultations over the proposed new UK nuclear plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset.

 Under a convention named for the Finnish town it was signed in 1991 – the ESPOO Convention on transboundary environmental impact assessment – Ireland is required to provide an opportunity to the public in areas likely to be affected to participate in public consultation that is ‘equivalent to that provided to the public of the Party of origin’ – the UK. 

FIE says that this has not happened.

The issue here is not anti or pro nuclear – simply the right to be consulted.

 Council Letter   |  PR on FIE complaint   |   FIE Complaint

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The report released by Lord Stern and thinktank carbon tracker paints a picture of society in denial. It shows we’re pumping almost $700bn (£458bn) of hard–earned savings and pensions annually into finding new reserves of fossil fuels, even though it’s clear that almost all of those reserves will have to be written off to provide a decent chance of keeping the planet safe. The ever–inflating “carbon bubble“ is only part of the bigger picture, because most of the world’s fuel – around three–quarters in total and almost all the oil and gas – is owned not by listed companies but by governments. And we don’t need only to stop expanding the world’s fossil fuel reserves; we also need to get used to the idea that we can’t burn most of what we already have.

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The world could be heading for a major economic crisis as stock markets inflate an investment bubble in fossil fuels to the tune of trillions of dollars, according to leading economists. “The financial crisis has shown what happens when risks accumulate unnoticed,” said Lord (Nicholas) Stern, a professor at the London School of Economics. He said the risk was “very big indeed” and that almost all investors and regulators were failing to address it. The so–called “carbon bubble“ is the result of an over–valuation of oil, coal and gas reserves held by fossil fuel companies. According to a report published on Friday, at least two–thirds of these reserves will have to remain underground if the world is to meet existing internationally agreed targets to avoid the threshold for “dangerous” climate change. If the agreements hold, these reserves will be in effect unburnable and so worthless – leading to massive market losses. But the stock markets are betting on countries’ inaction on climate change.

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We have far more oil, coal and gas than we can safely burn. For all the millions of words written about climate change, the challenge really comes down to this: fuel is enormously useful, massively valuable and hugely important geopolitically, but tackling global warming means leaving most of it in the ground – by choice. Although we often hear more about green technology, consumption levels or population growth, leaving fuel in the ground is the crux of the issue. After all, the climate doesn’t know or care how much renewable or nuclear energy we’ve got, how efficient our cars and homes are, how many people there are, or even how we run the economy. It only cares how much globe–warming pollution we emit – and that may be curiously immune to the measures we usually assume will help.

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The development of low–carbon energy is progressing too slowly to limit global warming, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Wednesday. With power generation still dominated by coal and governments failing to increase investment in clean energy, top climate scientists have said that the target of keeping the global temperature rise to less than 2C this century is slipping out of reach.

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New research suggests that fracking is not a significant cause of earthquakes that can be felt on the surface. UK scientists looked at quakes caused by human activity ranging from mining to oil drilling; only three could be attributed to hydraulic fracturing. Most fracking events released the same amount of energy as jumping off a ladder, the Durham–based team said. They argue that the integrity of well bores drilled for fracking is of much greater concern.

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Ocean energy developer Wavebob looks set to be wound up next week when its board will tell investors, including State–owned Bord Gáis, that the company has run out of money.

Wavebob, set up in 1999 to develop a commercial system for converting wave energy into electricity, will hold shareholders’ and creditors’ meetings next week to place the company in liquidation.The company has spent about ¤10 million to date, much of it raised from investors, including State–owned utility Bord Gáis, which put ¤1.8 million into Wavebob in 2010.

Chairman Padraig Berry confirmed yesterday that the board has concluded that the company cannot continue to trade. “Putting it simply, we have run out of money,” he said.

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Most environmentalists are in no doubt. The new technology of fracking to extract shale gas from the rocks beneath our homes is both a nasty neighbour and a sure recipe for climate Armageddon. Not only that, fracking was pioneered in the US, the gas–guzzling land of climate sceptics. Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, uses high–pressure water to shatter shale rocks and release natural gas lurking within. The gas is then piped to the surface. Shale rocks are widespread. But fracking requires lots of water; the toxic sludges brought back to the surface can cause pollution; and the extraction has even triggered minor earthquakes. However, I can’t bring myself to condemn it. These drawbacks mean there are plenty of places where fracking would not be a good idea, especially in crowded Britain. But that is different from the blanket ban that most environment groups demand.

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 Planning permission has been refused for a giant €30m windfarm with turbines that stretch up to 500ft high.

The planned turbines, at Electric Ireland’s coal–burning power station at Moneypoint, would have been more than 100ft higher than Dublin’s stainless steel Spire. Clare County Council refused planning for the five 500ft turbines on the grounds of impact on the adjoining Shannon estuary, which contains the largest resident bottlenose dolphin population in Europe. 

The windfarm is part of Electric Ireland’s plans to deliver a third of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, which will include more than 1,400MW of wind generation. The application follows more than 130 turbines approved or applied for in west Clare.

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Protesters say 2,000 turbines set for midlands because of opposition in Britain

Opposition to wind farms in Britain is “the real reason” behind the plan to locate more than 2,000 turbines in the midlands, with the power they produce being exported across the Irish Sea, according to opponents. 

Andrew Duncan, spokesman for the Lakelands Wind Information Group in Co Westmeath, said: “It seems to be an Irish solution to a British problem – politically, they don’t want turbines in the British countryside.” 

Last October, British energy minister John Hayes said his government would no longer have wind turbines imposed on rural communities while environment secretary Owen Paterson also referred to wind–farm “blight”. 

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Plans for an €8bn wind energy project that would allow new wind farms in central Ireland to export power to the mainland UK will receive a major boost this afternoon with the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the two governments. British Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey and Irish Energy Minister Pat Rabbitte will sign the agreement at a ceremony in Dublin, committing the two countries to work together on assessing the feasibility of the proposals before the agreement of a potential treaty next year.

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China and Australia top a global list of planned oil, gas and coal projects that will act as “carbon bombs” and push the planet towards catastrophic climate change, a Greenpeace report warned on Tuesday. The Point of No Return study, by consultancy firm Ecofys for Greenpeace, calculated that the 14 giant fossil fuel projects would produce 6.3 gigatonnes of CO2 a year in 2020 – as much as the entire United States emits annually.

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UXBRIDGE, Canada, Dec 17 2012 (IPS) – The most important number in history is now the annual measure of carbon emissions. That number reveals humanity’s steady billion–tonne by billion–tonne march to the edge of the carbon cliff, beyond which scientists warn lies a fateful fall to catastrophic climate change. With the global total of climate–disrupting emissions likely to come in at around 52 gigatonnes (billion metric tonnes) this year, we’re already at the edge, according to new research. To have a good chance of staying below two degrees C of warming, global emissions should be between 41 and 47 gigatonnes (Gt) by 2020, said Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at Switzerland’s Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich.

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The International Energy Agency (IEA) says that coal will catch up with oil as the world’s leading energy source by 2022. In a report, the Agency says that increased demand from India and China are fuelling the push. Natural gas offers the best hope of reducing carbon emissions in the short term the report concludes. It comes as the European Union acknowledged that it has been unable to fund a single project to capture and store CO2.

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An innocent observer could be forgiven for thinking that the United Nations climate talks, now hotting up in the Qatar capital of Doha, would be the focus of the international fight to combat global warming. But the innocent observer would be wrong. There is indeed a battle going on, one that will determine the planet’s future, but it is not between the negotiators finding new ways to disagree over the implementation of decisions they have already made. The battle is being waged in energy and finance ministries around the world, and in the boardrooms of energy companies and their bankers. It is the battle between a high–carbon and a low–carbon energy future. And the outcome is unclear. On the one hand, global investment in renewable technologies, particularly wind and solar, has been racing ahead: for the past three years it has exceeded investment in generation from fossil fuels. Last year, fully 70% of all European power investment was in renewables.

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Amid the inky gloom that shrouded George Osborne when he delivered a wintry autumn statement of more cuts and further tax rises, there was a dreamy gleam in the eye of the chancellor. Like a Spanish conquistador setting out for Latin America, he thinks he can find a source of fabulous riches. This El Dorado is not made of bullion, but it sounds as good as gold when you hear him and other enthusiasts talk about this magic stuff. It is natural gas in underground shales. For believers, and there are now many of them in the Tory party, shale gas is going to provide Britain with a remarkable bonanza of cheap energy.

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Plans for an offshore wind farm near Tiree have been delayed by ScottishPower Renewables. The company said the Argyll Array scheme had been put on hold for 12 months. The firm said it would use the time to study reports on the potential environmental impact of the project, alongside other agencies. There are concerns it could affect basking sharks and seabirds, including Great Northern Divers.

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