2. Look at the pie charts A and B below. Non-renewable energy sources were used to produce 79% of electricity in Ireland in 2013. What type of fuel do you think was used to generate it?
Renewable 21%
Renewable 40%
Non-
Non-renewable 79%
A. How Ireland’s electricity needs were met in 2013.
renewable 60%
B. Target for meeting Ireland’s electricity needs by 2020.
3. Ireland aims to produce 40% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020. (a) Suggest one source of renewable energy that could be used to achieve this target. (b) What are the advantages and disadvantages of producing electricity this way?
T I
Thinking and Investigating Read the newspaper article below and answer the questions that follow.
Case Study Sun, wind and drain
Billions of euro are spent on developing solar and wind power industries in the hope that they will one day provide energy more cheaply than fossil fuels do, and to drastically reduce the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere. The idea seems to be working. In a few sunny places solar power is providing electricity as cheaply as coal or gas-fired power plants. The problem is that calculating the cost of producing electricity does not take into account the costs of intermittency. An intermittent energy source is not available all the time. Wind power is not generated on a calm day, nor solar power at night, so fossil fuel power plants must be kept on standby. If we compare the amount of CO2
production avoided by using a particular form of energy, then using nuclear power plants avoids almost four times as much CO2
farms and six times as much CO2
per unit of electricity as wind per
unit of electricity as solar power. This is because fossil fuel plants must be used for the times when electricity cannot be produced by solar or wind farms. Seven solar plants or four wind farms would be needed to produce the same amount of electricity over time as a similarly sized coal-fired power plant. There are, of course, all sorts of reasons to choose one form of energy over another, including emissions of pollutants other than CO2
and fear of nuclear accidents. The Economist (adapted) 457
