www.greenbuildermag.com 07.2012
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GDP GROWTH IN IRELAND
15 10 5 0
1980 -5 -10 82 84 86 88 90 92 94 96 98 2000 02 04 06 08 2010
The Crash
After the 2008 downturn, Ireland’s housing production dropped from about 60,000 units a year to fewer than 12,000 units.
ESCAPE TRAJECTORY?
Ireland’s spiraling crisis of energy dependency is alarming, but not surprising—nor unavoidable. The Irish, no strangers to scar- city, can tighten their belts quickly. When fuel prices in parts of Northern Ireland surged by almost 40% in 2011, residents quickly reduced their fuel demands by 15%. They know it’s better to sit in the cold than to go without food. But belt tightening is a short-term solution to the bigger prob-
lem. Other European nations—such as Germany—have demon- strated that renewable energy is a viable alternative to fossil fuels, even if sunlight is not optimal. Germany recently set a record when it produced 22 gigawatts of solar power over one weekend, pow- ering more than 50% of the country’s needs. That’s way beyond the level of power production most experts would have believed possible fi ve years ago. How did Germany do it? Following public horror at a close
call from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Germany found the po- litical will to back away from nuclear power, and focus instead on solar. They enacted hugely successful feed-in tariff s, requiring utilities to pay premium prices to private PV owners. According to
Solarlinepower.com, “The town of Freiberg, Germany (population 200,000) alone produces as much energy from solar power systems as the whole of Britain.” Without getting into the details of Irish politics, the country has
been given a pathetically low energy benchmark goal (set by the EU)—to achieve 16% renewable energy by 2020. Those are the same kinds of lowball goals we’ve come to expect from the U.S. government, but Ireland arguably has even less time to waste. Nonetheless, even that 16% goal will require tripling their current renewable capacity in eight years. The Irish have been leaning toward feed-in tariff s for renewables
for several years, but enactment has been slow. The government also tends to favor biomass and larger scale types of micro-gener- ation over smaller, more aff ordable PV systems. And it’s unlikely that Ireland will grow its exports rapidly
enough to buy its way out of this crisis. Europe has problems of its own, and trying to build a market in the U.S. is extremely tough. “In the States, we’re not really dealing with a country,” notes
O’Hagan of Bord na Móna. “Rather, we’re dealing with 50 coun- tries that all have diff erent laws. More than that, we’re dealing with counties within those States that have their own rules too.”
Options: Low-Tech or High-Tech Ireland’s in a tough spot. As an isolated island nation, they could become the Easter Island of our time—the fi rst “modern” country forced to drastically change by the the triple threat of scarce resources, denser population and climate change. They may have little time to act—carbon dioxide in the Northern Hemisphere reached 400 parts per million last month, for the fi rst time in 800,000 years. On the one hand, they may decide to bet everything on a
fi nal throw—to look to the east, to the examples of Sweden and Germany, countries that have spent the last decade radically trans- forming their economies to function more sustainably. Another option is a return to their agricultural roots. This is
the so-called “Future Primitive” that many writers say is inevi- table, as fossil fuel winds down. It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. A recent New York Times article describes this process unfolding in austerity-hammered Greece. Hit with unemployment rates of up to 35%, young people in their early twenties—along with their parents—are becoming farmers again. GB
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