There is an answer to our energy problem out there

OPINION: SCIENCE:New thinking is needed, not least because innovation in the energy sphere will invariably translate into wealth for the discoverer ,writes Dick Ahlstrom

IRISH SCIENTISTS will really have to think outside the box if we are to make the most of the €90 million made available by Government earlier this year for energy research. It won't be good enough if the money drains away on studies into the familiar, if unremarkable, biomass and energy crops.

We need some real creativity injected into the business of going green on the energy front.

Disbursed by Science Foundation Ireland under its new third research pillar - energy - it should predominantly support fresh, lateral thinking in radical new areas, provided, of course, these can be identified in the first place. New thinking is needed, not least because innovation in the energy sphere will invariably translate into wealth for the discoverer.

It doesn't matter where the innovation comes from, provided that it comes from an Irish lab. It could be in using solar energy to split water to make fuel and in any of the steps involved in this process.

The record for solar conversion efficiency currently stands at about 39 per cent, but how much would it be worth to the discoverer if efficiency could be pushed to 60 or 70 per cent? And imagine the benefits to the wider society in helping to find an alternative to our unconquerable addiction to oil.

If not in materials science, then perhaps the innovation will come out of clever engineering. Applied physicist Igor Shvets last month gave a public lecture at Trinity College Dublin about how wind and hydro were capable of supplying our entire national electricity demand. Impossible, most would argue, but Shvets had the numbers and calculations and plans to show how such an energy supply system might work.

His scheme is based on building just four large wind farms, each about 10km square (and he found locations that might suit), which together would deliver the 1.5 billion watts (1.5 gigawatts) needed to keep us going on a typical day.

He assumed a 40 per cent production efficiency, but what if there was no wind? No problem. You also build approximately two gigawatts of hydro power, delivered by pumped storage hydro-electric plants. These iron out the sharp peaks in demand, such as during the 5pm rush when people get home from work and start cooking and boiling kettles. They also fill in when the wind doesn't blow.

This could all be built right now using existing technology, freeing us forever from having to import €6 billion a year worth of oil. We would still need transport fuels and oil products for other applications, but not €6 billion worth. The only thing missing from the scenario is the will to do it.

The same could be said of support for blue-skies energy research. It is essential that Irish scientists be given the head to pursue exotic ideas and new ways of thinking about green energy supply. It is from this quarter that new discoveries will come, and fortunes will be made. This is where the power of Irish scientific creativity should be directed.

There is nothing wrong with supporting more traditional forms of green energy, oil crops, biomass, ethanol production, but there is now a lot less clarity about which of these are genuinely worth pursuing.

Biofuel plantations steal land away from food production, something that we can tolerate in the west, but which can cause food shortages in developing economies. New research published last month in Conservation Biology has also shown that growing biofuels such as palm oil trees on tropical forestlands is bad for the climate, due to carbon release and bad for biodiversity.

Some countries with rainforests moved to cash in on palm oil production given growing demand in the west to power cars using vegetable oils.

It is true that palm oil provides a replacement for fossil oil, but it would take 75 years for the carbon emissions saved through the use of these biofuels to match the carbon capture achieved by the original forest.

If instead you drain peat land to make way for the palm trees, then it will take 600 years before a savings in carbon emissions can be achieved, the study found. And this doesn't begin to take into account the biodiversity loss in either scenario caused by the switch to a palm monoculture.

Somewhere, perhaps lurking in the recesses of some obscure scientist's mind, there is an answer to our collective energy problem. This same scientist might be a postgraduate or a postdoctorate attached to an Irish university or institute of technology.

Why shouldn't we consider the possibility of Ireland solving the world's energy woes? Didn't local creativity manage to take over the world of dance, rock music and literature?