The Role of Bioenergy in Ireland’s Low Carbon Future – Is it Sustainable?

Abstract

Cite as: Chiodi, A., Deane, P., Gargiulo, M., Gallachóir ABSTRACTThis paper assesses through scenario analysis the future role of bioenergy in a deep mitigation context. We focus in particular on the implications for sustainability -namely, competing demands for land-use, import dependency, availability of sustainable bioenergy and economics. The analysis here is limited to one Member State, Ireland, which is an interesting case study for a number of reasons, including significant import dependency and recent acceleration in renewable energy deployment. We used the Irish TIMES model, the energy systems model for Ireland developed with the TIMES model generator, for this scenario analysis. Long term, least cost mitigation scenarios point to bioenergy meeting more than half of Ireland's energy needs by 2050. The results of this paper point to the impact of tightened sustainability criteria and limitation on bioenergy imports, namely the increased use of indigenous bioenergy feedstocks, increased electrification in the energy system, the introduction of hydrogen and higher marginal abatement costs.

Impact of including land-use change emissions from biofuels on meeting GHG emissions reduction targets: the example of Ireland

“…The selection of bioenergy feedstocks for Ireland is based on current imports and consumption trends (NORA 2014), and projected bioenergy potential for the period up to 2050 (Chiodi et al 2015a). Waste, residues and recycled oil were excluded as they do not induce any land-use change (European Parliament and Council 2009a).…”

“…The energy system costs include investment, operation and maintenance costs, plus the costs of imported fuels, minus the incomes of exported fuels, and the residual value of technologies at the end of the horizon (Loulou et al 2005). The Irish TIMES model (Ó Gallachóir et al 2012) has been used to test a number of future energy and emissions' policy scenarios, such as impact of climate mitigation policy on Irish energy system by 2020 (Chiodi et al 2013a) and 2050 (Chiodi et al 2013b), energy security (Glynn et al 2014), impact of limiting the bioenergy resources (Chiodi et al 2015a), and integrated agricultural and energy systems modelling (Chiodi et al 2015b).…”

“…Cost projections for these sources are based on international trends in Clancy et al (2012). Both the potentials and costs assumptions for each individual commodity are summarised in Chiodi et al (2015a). Non-energy GHG emissions related to growth of energy crops (although not considered in this paper) are also modelled, based on inputs from the FAPRI-Ireland model (Donnellan et al 2013).…”

Zero carbon energy system pathways for Ireland consistent with the Paris Agreement

“…Irish climate and energy policy legislation has been informed by the Irish-TIMES energy systems model , investigating mitigation targets to 2020 , long-term targets to 2050 , questions of bioenergy import dependency (Chiodi, Deane, Gargiulo, & Ó Gallachóir, 2015), technical realism of the electricity sector soft-linked to power systems model (Deane, Chiodi, Gargiulo, & Ó Gallachóir, 2012), energy security (Glynn et al, 2014;Glynn, Chiodi, & Ó Gallachóir, 2017), and agriculture sector feedback to energy system emissions targets (Chiodi et al, 2016). These previous studies outline the energy system evolution under differing technical and environmental scenario constraints and solve a partial equilibrium least cost optimization, i.e.…”

Addressing Concerns Related to the Use of Ethanol-Blended Fuels in Marine Vehicles

“…For example, in 2015 ethanol levels in gasoline accounted for 10% of all gasoline fuels sold, ensuring that all automobiles frequently used E10 [3]. The use of biofuels has caused some concerns about its effect on food production [4]. As Dias et al [5] describes that although US corn production grew by 70% between 2004 and 2007, much of it was used to produce fuel ethanol which consumes 65% of the corn produced.…”