New report from MaREI Centre shows how Climate Bill can be delivered

A new report says a Net-Zero Energy System for Ireland is possible by 2050, it believes it is cost-effective and has the potential to create more than 50,000 jobs. Our Climate Neutral Future: Zeroby50 is published by MaREI, the SFI Research Centre for Energy, Climate and Marine, hosted by University College Cork, on behalf of Wind Energy Ireland.
The report is a call to action for the Government and for every level of Irish society. Minister for Environment, Climate Action and Communications Eamon Ryan TD welcomed the report: “We have set a national climate objective to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. In the coming months we will develop a new Climate Action Plan to set out how we will achieve this.

Paul Deane writer of the report comments in LinkedIN as follows :

“Low levels of emissions reduction from agriculture require much higher levels of mitigation from cars, homes, and electricity to meet the Plan for Government 51% emissions reduction ambition by 2030. Food production will remain the main use of land in Ireland, but greater innovation and diversification of land use is needed. The structure and size of our national herd is a fundamental driver of emissions and efficiency improvements are not enough to meet targets. We must support options that provide alternatives (not additions) to livestock farming for families in the most unprofitable sectors. Options such as sustainable and certified biogas, energy crops with low land-use change, carbon farming with verifiable carbon sequestration, ecotourism and biodiversity protection must be explored”

James Cogan from Ethanol Europe and overseeing IrBEA’s Transport Working Group commented on the report:

‘Renewable wind electricity is clearly central to Ireland’s energy future…’ but notes that ‘renewable electricity can only be used in place of electricity, and right now there is essentially zero electricity in Irish transport.  The progress of blending sustainable bioliquids in conjunction with the deployment of electric vehicles is essential to reducing emissions in this sector.  There are simply no scenarios under which electromobility will scale up quick enough for the 2030 targets.  Market-ready bioliquids and biogas will be needed at four times the current usage rate in transport”.

“I’d appeal to policy makers to consider three key factors:  The number of conventional cars on our roads is still growing steadily, meaning that cars represent as a hard a sector to decarbonise as heavy goods or aviation.  There will be no hiding from this.   Second, carbon savings are like paying your mortgage – the earlier you start the better. Ireland should introduce E10 petrol immediately (petrol with 10% bioethanol in it), cutting 100,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually on top of the 100,000 cut by the 5% bioethanol that’s been in our petrol for the last few years.  Most EU countries have made the move already, with Sweden being the most recent.  Finally, our regulators need to embrace crop biofuels, which are market ready, proven and super sustainable, so long as they are sourced responsibly (which means in Europe).  Ireland could use ten times more crop biofuels than it does today and it would be the surest path to sustainable transport that we could wish for.”

Related article

The Irish Times says: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/energy-and-resources/report-shows-how-ireland-can-deliver-net-zero-energy-system-by-2050-1.4524135

UK moves to E10 petrol in September

It’s official.  The UK government is introducing E10 to its petrol pumps in the Autumn.

For some years now the policy process there has been about when and not if they’d do it, and the when has finally arrived.

This follows an increase in January this year in the UK, in the cost to fuel suppliers of buying out a biofuels cert instead of actually using biofuel, from 30 pence per litre to 50 pence.

E10 petrol is petrol with 10% bioethanol in it, up from the current 5% blend (E5) which UK and Irish drivers having been running on for years.  Bioethanol is pure alcohol, and it’s made by fermenting the sugars in grains, beet or cane.  As well as displacing oil in transport, bioethanol is the basis of most hand and surface sanitising products, as well as some popular beverages and an endless list of indispensable industrial products.  It is, after water, mankind’s most useful, versatile and sustainable liquid.

The position of Ireland’s department of the environment on E10 has always been the same as the UK:  when and not if.   The Irish government, with Eamon Ryan in charge of climate and energy, has yet to react one way or the other to the UK decision.   The department is traditionally very accessible and we have sent them an invite for a briefing on the UK move and its implications for Ireland.  We engaged actively with the UK Department for Transport during the period they were evaluating E10, and they even visited Ireland on a couple of occasions on our initiative, to engage with Irish stakeholders.  We believe we contributed valuable evidence to them in support of E10 and their ultimate decision in favour of it.

Ireland’s fuels industry, represented by Fuels For Ireland, is keen to follow the UK, and introduce E10 here simultaneously this year.  It has called on the government to mandate the use of E10 from 2021 onwards.  From a technical and standards perspective there’s nothing to stop the fuels industry from going ahead and doing it piecemeal, regardless of what the government does or doesn’t do, but apparently there are commercial and logistics challenges which are best overcome by everyone moving in unison.   The Irish and UK supply chains are closely related, so it makes sense for them to stick close.  All refineries can and do make both E5 and E10 grades so that’s not the question.  It’s actually the distribution and depot systems that need to be considered, because handling two distinct blends separately in the system, where before there was just one dominant blend, would be understandably unwieldy, especially where some parts of the distribution system are used by competing companies.

Fuel retailers won’t experience any change whatsoever, apart from a simple change to the pump labels, with the lettering E5 replaced by E10.  There are no compatibility or fuel mixing issues as E10 means any ethanol blend petrol, from 0% up to 10%, so consignments of E5 and E10 petrol can be mixed together perfectly happily in any ratio at any time.

Likewise our drivers won’t experience any change.  Just as the switch to E5 was imperceptible to them nearly ten years ago, so too will the switch to E10 now.   Their cars will perform a bit better and emit less particulate matter from the tailpipe because ethanol is both an excellent fuel in its own right and an excellent enhancer of traditional fuel, allowing engines operate leaner and cleaner.  Virtually all petrol cars on Irish roads were designed expressly to be at their optimum performance point on E10, and not on E5, and EU engine and emissions tests are referenced to E10.

Which brings us to the crux of the matter, which is why E10 was a good idea in the first place.

Ethanol is a fuel which, on a joule-for-joule basis, results in about 75% less greenhouse gas emissions than traditional petrol, when the full lifecycle is considered.  Factor in that ethanol has a slightly lower energy density than petrol, and a 10% blend of ethanol by volume results in E10 being 5% or 6% less carbon intensive than conventional petrol with no bioethanol in it.   This may seem modest, but bearing in mind that Ireland has a million petrol cars on the roads, E10 is the equivalent to taking 50,000 of them out of service, in terms of carbon emissions reductions.   We would need around 100,000 electric vehicles to achieve the same progress.   Clearly Ireland needs both EVs and E10, but the point is that E10 brings that climate progress within the existing vehicle fleet, in an instant, and at no cost to the consumer or the exchequer.  France is rolling out 85% Superéthanol-E85 (requiring a discrete little €100 tuning adapter fitted to the engine) for the same reason, while many other countries have E15, E20 and E25 blends in the market.

Bioethanol is an anchor product for a biorefinery, so at our biorefinery in Hungary (www.pannoniabio.com), for every kilo of ethanol we make, there is also a kilo of protein rich GMO-free animal feed coming out of the process, plus some corn oil, biogas, fibre and some specialty biomaterials.   The protein animal feed on its own would be worth the effort, because if such feed is not coming from sustainable operations such as ours it’s virtually guaranteed to be coming from out-of-sight soy meal operations in the Americas.   In addition, the business assures much needed long term income stability for the farm sector and many thousands of quality jobs inside and outside the plant.   Collectively, the EU biofuels sector brings over 6 billion in incomes to EU farmers annually, which is equivalent to about 15% of the CAP programme (which is a great!).

Any downsides?   No, none whatsoever – bioethanol is all good.

The European Commission did introduce a blanket 7% cap on all biofuels made from crops in 2017, for fear that biofuels would grow to the point of being a danger rather than a good.   In the case of domestic European biofuels that fear was an abstract notion and not connected to any real world scenario.  In reality volumes of domestic biofuels could double, treble or quadruple and still be overwhelmingly more of a good thing than a danger.  Ireland is so far within the crop cap that the question is totally moot for us, so no matter what way you look at it E10 is the right way to go.

In the UK the RAC issued a caveat that a small percentage of cars were built before E10 became a world standard, and that the drivers of such cars should check for compatibility.   But there’s no need to check.  The USA has been using E10 in all of its 250 million petrol vehicles – of every conceivable type – for many years and not a single incident has ever been reported to the fuel suppliers, the car makers or the regulators.  Likewise a half dozen EU countries.  Just as importantly, no amount of technical analysis or engine and lab testing has ever resulted in evidence that might be a concern.  My advice is that it’s simply not an issue and that all cars, of every make, model and age run perfectly well on E10.

The bottom line is that E10 petrol is coming to the UK this year, it’s simple, easy and a win-win all round, and with a bit of luck it will arrive here too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Webinar 15: Showcasing Europe’s most advanced Irish owned biorefinery

ClonBio Group Ltd: A snapshot of an Irish led company at the centre of the European bioeconomy: origins, path taken so far and future developments. ClonBio was founded in 2008, was operating a major biorefinery in Hungary by 2010 and has gone on to become Europe’s most dynamic bioeconomy investor.

View the live recording of the Presentation here

Webinar Speaker

James Cogan
ClonBio Group Ltd

James is an industry and policy analyst at ClonBio Group Ltd.  He expertise is on EU climate, innovation and economic development policy. He is currently working to support the introduction of climate friendly E10 petrol in Ireland. He is a member of the Private Sector Mechanism of the UN Committee on Food Security. He represented the world Climate Ethanol Alliance as partner to the UNFCCC at COP24 in Katowice in 2018 and COP25 in Madrid in 2019. He has worked for the European Commission and its partners on innovation finance and innovation project development.

 

Webinar 3: Biodiesel and Bioethanol reducing transport emissions – 8th July 2020

This webinar, the third in the ‘IrBEA Bioenergy Webinar Series 2020’ heard from industry experts in the areas of biodiesel and bioethanol.   The Irish Bioenergy Association thank everyone for taking the time to join us this week.

A recording of the presentation can be found HERE  and the presentations slides HERE

Our next online webinar will be held shortly we will keep you updated.

James Cogan IrBEA Biofuel Representative Reports on the Sector

James Cogan  (EERL) is a corporate member of IrBEA has recently had a number of meetings with ministers and department officials. Ethanol Europe is an Irish firm that operating an ethanol production facility Pannonia, Hungary . His article in Agriland discusses the status of the Biofuels industry in Europe and Ireland and what issues need to be overcome for the sector to grow, he is concerned that the Irish Government is supporting moves that minimise the use of biofuels at EU level.
Currently Ireland produces 17.5% of the biofuels that are used domestically; however, it is all derived from used cooking oil and animal fat. No Irish farmers are producing biofuels at present. At the EU level however 33% of biofuels – and all of the ethanol that goes to improving climate performance in petrol cars – comes from wheat, maize and beet produced by European farmers. Cogan insists that domestic tillage crop biofuels will dominate the market in the future as they are truly safe and effective as climate solutions. Currently the sector  buys €7 billion worth of tillage crops each year (equivalent to 12% of CAP) and gives back 17 million tonnes of GMO-free protein feed; plus, 220,000 jobs in rural areas and a flourishing bio-economy.

Cogan has held meetings with Minister Michael Creed and Denis Naughten in a bid to boost support for the “promising” sector, he stresses that the Government should ambitiously support biofuels for two reasons in particular: firstly because it is good for the climate; and secondly because of the benefits it can bring farmers. Tillage farming in Ireland has declined 17% in the last five years, With proper support Ireland’s tillage farmers could see a reverse in this trend and processing of their crops at home. He says Ireland must look to the example set by the Scandinavian countries – Sweden in particular – where 20% of country’s transport energy comes from biofuels. To read the article in full here