News From the Hill

Archive for October 3rd, 2009

I was web-surfing for while today waiting for the rain to stop – I have a few sacks of montbretia to plant out thanks to a green fingered friend who was tidying up her garden.

I noticed a headline on a news report that looked promising – “Ryan announces €500m investment for electricity sector” – Ryan being a Green party government minister with responsibility for energy.

I was hoping perhaps there would finally be some money available to make our electricity structure more friendly towards grid-connect renewable energy systems – silly me!

No matter how often the green party have disappointed (I hasten to add that I am not nor have I ever been a member of any political party) I still expect them to behave as though they had green interests at heart and I repeatedly come disappointed and feel let down by them.

This 500million euros will be spent creating an interconnector between Ireland and Britain – It will allow the State to buy electricity from Britain during times of strong demand and crucially for the development of wind energy, will also allow the State to sell into the British grid at times of excess power.

This has been touted by minister Ryan as a green victory. How can he pretend to such things? We certainly don’t have enough green power being generated in this country to sell any excess and it will be a very long time, if ever,  before we come even close to that situation.

What will happen is that we will buy electricity from Britain,  nuclear generated electricity!

Irish people have always had a very clear stance on not using nuclear power and successive governments have always had to recognise this. But we can use it if someone else generates it and someone else has to live beside the nuclear power plant?

A green victory? - It’s pretty damn hollow!