How the EU repeatedly bypassed its Legal Framework and the Rights of its Citizens to implement its Renewable Programme

by Pat Swords

The EU makes repeated claims about the importance of the rule of law, but in reality, it fails to comply with its own legal framework and the rights of its citizens are not considered relevant, when it comes to implementing the New Green Deal. The ideological driven planned economies behind the Iron Curtain, with little regard for either environmental impacts or citizen’s rights, left behind a bitter legacy. In response emerged the United Nations Economic Convention for Europe’s (UNECE) Aarhus Convention on “Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters”, which has been part of EU legal framework since 2005. As the EU Commission has clarified:

“Such agreements take precedence over legal acts adopted under the EC Treaty (secondary Community law). So if there was a conflict between a Directive and a Convention, such as the Aarhus Convention, all Community or Member State administrative or judicial bodies would have to apply the provision of the Convention and derogate from the secondary law provision.”

As part of this Convention on environmental democracy, obligation placed on contracting parties include "fully integrating environmental considerations in governmental decision making and the consequent need for public authorities to be in possession of accurate, comprehensive and up to date environmental information".  That there should, in a transparent and fair framework, be a weighing up of environmental considerations is  no different than a key element of EU jurisprudence, the principle of proportionality, which requires that :

“Measures adopted by EU institutions do not exceed the limits of what is appropriate and necessary in order to attain the objectives legitimately pursued by the legislation in question; when there is a choice between several appropriate measures, recourse must be had to the least onerous, and the disadvantages caused must not be disproportionate to the aims pursued”.

As Recital 15 of Directive 2009/28/EC demonstrates, the EU’s 20% by 2020 renewable target was shared out among the Member States based on the existing percentage of renewables and a ‘fudge factor’ based on GDP. No environmental information existed on what was to be built, where it was to be built, what were the impacts and mitigation measures, etc. Having zero information to quantify the negative impact of carbon emissions, the alleged benefit of the 20% renewable target was related to the expected future price of carbon on the EU emissions trading scheme. A price, which is driven by political decisions related to allocations of carbon credits, with zero relationship to environmental impacts. Hence, what resulted was a circular logic of political target setting in the absence of reasoned decision making, with a complete absence of environmental information to justify the enormous impacts on the European environment and energy markets. 

This glaring democratic deficit was compounded by the supranational dynamics of the EU, where Directives before adoption should first be scrutinised by public participation at the Member State level, such as in Ireland by detailed Regulatory Impact Analysis with public engagement. However, in practice this was by-passed.

After adoption of Directive 2009/28/EC there was only a year for Member States to prepare National Renewable Energy Action Plans (NREAPs) to implement these renewable targets. The Member States essentially left the section on the environmental impacts of these NREAPs blank, as it was an optional requirement in the EU template. Such plans are also subject before adoption to the detailed requirements of the EU’s Directive on Strategic Environmental Assessment (2001/42/EC), in order to establish the justification, alternatives, impacts, mitigation measures and monitoring for unforeseen adverse impacts. This was also bypassed. 

Such legal failures led to a compliance case against the EU at the UNECE (ACCC/C/2010/54) and in 2014 a subsequent declaration of legal non-compliance in International law: Decision V/9g of the Meeting of the Parties on compliance by the European Union with its obligations under the Aarhus Convention. The UNECE recommendations require the EU to:

“…. adopt a proper regulatory framework and/or clear instructions for implementing article 7 of the Convention with respect to the adoption of NREAPs. This would entail that the Party concerned ensure that the arrangements for public participation in its member States are transparent and fair and that within those arrangements the necessary information is provided to the public. In addition, such a regulatory framework and/or clear instructions must ensure that the requirements of article 6, paragraphs 3, 4 and 8, of the Convention are met, including reasonable time frames, allowing sufficient time for informing the public and for the public to prepare and participate effectively, allowing for early public participation when all options are open, and ensuring that due account is taken of the outcome of the public participation. Moreover, the Party concerned must adapt the manner in which it evaluates NREAPs accordingly”. 

As the UNECE documentation records, the EU has since 2014 failed to make any progress to comply with the recommendations above, repeatedly failing to reply to specific questions and advice. Furthermore, at the subsequent 2017 UNECE Meeting of the Parties, it blocked with its 28 votes, a further decision of non-compliance against it. Namely its refusal to provide its citizens with effective access to justice, in order to bring such challenges of non-compliance of EU environmental law directly into the Court of Justice of the European Union. Ongoing UNECE compliance proceedings have further expanded to include Regulation 2018/1999 on the Energy Union and Climate Action and the manner in which the National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs) were adopted. Yet again, the legal requirements of Strategic Environmental Assessment were bypassed and the public had no opportunity to participate in the decision-making, when all options were open and effective public participation could take place. 

If we consider the 2018 World Health Organisation’s Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region, while these adopted conditional recommendations for wind turbine noise, they make it very clear: “There are serious issues with noise exposure assessment related to wind turbines”.

“Balance of benefits versus harms and burdens: Further work is required to assess fully the benefits and harms of exposure to environmental noise from wind turbines and to clarify whether the potential benefits associated with reducing exposure to environmental noise for individuals living in the vicinity of wind turbines outweigh the impact on the development of renewable energy policies in the WHO European Region”.

Significant negative impacts are occurring on rural populations from the impacts of high-energy sources of low frequency sound (infrasound). There are legal liabilities, as the required Strategic Environmental Assessments and associated monitoring for unforeseen adverse environmental effects never occurred. 

ESB Profits show that Wind Energy has not Reduced Reliance on Fossil Fuels

ESB operate most of the fossil fuel powered generators in Ireland. Their gas, peat and coal generating plants amount to about 3,400 MW. Hydro about 400MW and wind about 450MW. So about 80% of their generation is from fossil fuel sources.

Given that Ireland now has in total about 3,500MW of wind, we should, if the wind energy supporters are right, see wind energy eroding profits in ESB generation.

But their latest results show that their Generation and Trading business has increased it's profits by    € 26 million to € 70 million. Although there was lower running in Moneypoint, this was more than offset by a higher margin in gas plants. 

A breakdown of this profit is not given, but we can safely assume that most of it came from fossil fuel generation since that comprises 80% of their business as I have shown above. It is indicative that during the same period, there was an impairment charge (i.e. a write down) of €1.8 million for a wind farm.

So almost a decade on from Ireland's Renewable Energy Action Plan which stated that :

Renewable energy reduces dependence on fossil fuels, improves security of supply, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions creating environmental benefits while delivering green jobs to the economy, thus contributing to national competitiveness. 

 we can now see that wind energy does not reduce dependence on fossil fuels, rather, it maintains dependence on it.

Non Compliance with Aarhus Convention - Update

Reblogged from The Law is My Oyster with thanks to Neil, Pat and David for their efforts.

The Irish Authorities have got themselves into a precarious state of affairs viz a viz their responsibilities under International and European environmental law :

The first session involved the opening statements.  These are delivered in writing to the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee (ACCC) beforehand, which allows a speaker from both sides to paraphrase and highlight the main points underpinning the Communication and the Party’s Response  in about ten minutes or so.

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And then it was the turn of the Curator. The Curator is the ACCC member who was assigned the case, researches it, makes some sort of preliminary assessment (and perhaps recommendations?) to the rest of the Committee in closed session before the parties are invited in.

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The Curator asks ‘clarification questions’ to both the Communicant (us) and the Party (the Irish government) – sometimes a common question for both sides to answer, and sometimes a question directly and specifically at one party but the other is entitled to respond to the answer to the question. It is a very European civil-law way of doing it and you need to listen to the questions carefully, as they often have a sting in the tail.

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Full Article Here - https://the-law-is-my-oyster.com/2016/06/28/report-on-communication-acccc2014112-regarding-complaint-of-non-compliance-against-ireland/

Is the writing on the wall for the NREAP?

An update on the precarious legal position of Ireland's Renewable Plans from The Law is My Oyster Blog is available here (Thanks Neil ! ) :

http://the-law-is-my-oyster.com/2015/10/30/is-the-writing-on-the-wall-for-the-nreap/

The European Union - what has it ever done for us ?

"Yeah, that's all very fine, but the Romans are making us use windmills, what are we going to do on a calm night ?"

Let's take a cursory look :

Ireland has received € 4.6 billion in Farm subsidies

http://farmsubsidy.openspending.org/IE/

and € 4.4 billion in structural funds for roads :

http://eustructuralfunds.gov.ie/csf-2000-2006/

http://eustructuralfunds.gov.ie/nsrf-2007-2013/

That's a total of € 9 billion since 2000.

According to the IMF, we were forced by the ECB to pay € 8 billion to unsecured bondholders, which we shouldn't have paid. So that leaves us in net receipt of € 1 billion.

But we seem to be missing the elephant in the room. Much has been made of all the above in the Irish media.

Due to EU regulations, we have been forced to turn our electricity system upside down and make significant changes to accommodate large amounts of intermittent wind. Irish Energy Blog estimates this total cost at € 20 billion:

http://irishenergyblog.blogspot.ie/2015/02/20-billion-committed-under-irelands.html

If we include REFIT over 15-20 years, this amounts to a minimum of € 2-3 billion. Then there are other support schemes for ocean and offshore energy which will be more expensive than onshore wind. This brings us up to circa € 25 billion. There will be no discernible benefit to the electricity consumer from these changes, in fact, its a net cost, particularly in these times of low fuel prices.

No mention hardly whatsoever has been made of this in the media, despite the fact that the sums for electricity dwarf the sums for bondholders, roads and farm subsidies.

This leaves Ireland at a net loss of € 24 billion as members of the EU.

Cost Benefit Analysis obligations for Ireland's Renewable Action Plan - Part Two

What has been the benefit to date from our expenditure?

By Pat Swords BE CEng FIChemE CEnv MIEMA

Ireland's Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP) was prepared in 2010 without any proper assessment of costs and impacts. Table 10 of the NREAP provides us with the bottom line on electricity generation, namely by 2020 the installation of 4,094 MW of onshore wind and 555 MW of offshore wind. For wind energy installed in Ireland, where project costs are higher than elsewhere, approximately €2 million per MW is the installed cost for onshore installations and at least €3 million per MW for offshore installations. This then gives a total cost for installed wind energy of almost €10 billion.

Additional electricity infrastructure is required in transmission to facilitate wind energy, already we have had the investment in the East West Interconnector to Wales at €0.6 billion, with more and even longer interconnectors to come to the UK and France – as described on page 79 of the NREAP. As a result the total cost of such interconnectors will conservatively come to another €3 billion.

In the Republic of Ireland there is the roll out of Grid 25 to expand the high voltage grid, for which an accurate cost is not known, but it is reported as some €4 billion and will undoubtedly rise, as the Energy White Paper of 2007 stated:

• We will ensure completion of the ongoing capital investment programme in transmission and distribution networks by 2010 and oversee further extensive investment in a programme expected to total €4.9bn up to 2013.

Not only is there over 800 km of new high voltage lines to be constructed in Grid 25, but as the All Island Grid Study demonstrated, there is an additional 5,000 km of medium voltage grid connections required to connect all these wind farms to the high voltage grid. For instance, in November 2011, the European Investment Bank, i.e. the EU’s bank, lent the ESB some €235 million for network expansions to facilitate increased deployment of wind energy. Further similar loans totaling €300 million followed in 2013 and 2014. Their total loans to the ESB to facilitate network expansions for wind farms in Ireland have by the end of 2014 totaled €1 billion.

So between high voltage and medium voltage grid expansions, plus interconnectors, there is a bill of some €8 billion, for which if we add the turbines, the total now reaches €18 billion. However, we are not done yet, as the electricity grid is now, with all this wind energy, in an unstable state. As a result it is necessary to roll out so called ‘smart meters’ to regulate consumers and their demand habits. These smart meters are described on page 77 of the NREAP and for their funding; we can throw in another billion or two into the financial pot.

However, this won’t ‘cure’ the fundamental problem the grid will experience, as more and more highly intermittent wind energy is installed and given priority access over conventional thermal power generation. As the former Green Party leader and Minister for Environment John Gormley's stated in his ‘Carbon Budget’ of October 2008:

• The target is underpinned by analysis conducted in the recent All Island Grid Study which found that a 40% penetration is technically feasible, subject to upgrading our electricity grid and ensuring the development of flexible generating plant on the electricity system.

In essence we will have to mothball our current base load Combined Cycle Gas Turbines (CCGTs), which although they cannot rapidly respond to changing loads, have efficiencies over 55% and greater. New open cycle fast response gas turbines, which are at best only 40% efficient, will have to be built to replace these CCGTs:

Efficiency curve for an aero-derived gas turbine, LM2500+, which is typical of the technology, which is used for open cycle gas turbines

Equally as bad as the poor efficiency obtained with these open cycle gas turbine, is how their emissions start to rise significantly at lower loads:

Emissions profile for a LM2500+ gas turbine

So given that a the UK authorities report that the installed cost of a CCGT is £0.9 million per MW and the installed cost of an open cycle plant (OCGT) about £0.6 million per MW, and we will require at least 1,000 MW of fast response power to balance the grid fluctuations, there is going to be no change out of another billion Euro in terms of investment in new plant and premature write offs of CCGTs.

So all in all over €20 billion plus was committed in capital investment alone as a consequences of the NREAP. By 2015 we have already installed 2,100 MW of wind energy, plus the East West Interconnector and network upgrades as previously highlighted, so we have spent quite conservatively €6 billion already. To that you have to add the operating costs, profit for the wind investors and the costs of inefficient operation of the grid. So it is not surprising that in their 2014 submission to the Irish Green Energy Paper, the Irish Academy of Engineering pointed out:

• Without wind generation, Ireland’s electricity generation costs in the period 2005 to 2013 would have increased by 1.2 cents per kWh due to the increased cost of imported fossil fuels. But over the same period, Ireland’s business electricity prices actually increased by 4.0 cents per kWh and household electricity prices increased by 8.85 cents per kWh. This clearly shows that increased fossil fuel import costs were not the cause of electricity price increases in Ireland but rather government policies which did not place appropriate emphasis on price competitiveness.

Considering that the Irish domestic electricity rate is between 19 and 20 cents per kWh, to which additional levies are applied, clearly without wind energy, the rate would be a third less, around 12.5 cent per kWh. This is not an isolated issue; the Union of the Electricity Industry – Eurelectric had a report produced by Accenture in 2014, which provides the rather sobering graphic of how costs to the consumer are soaring, in particular due to Renewable Energy Sources (RES):

Graphic from Eurelectric report

It is also worthwhile reflecting some more as to the so called reason and what we got for this in terms of environmental protection. If we consider Ireland’s first application for State Aid to establish the first phase of the REFIT scheme for supporting 1,450 MW of almost exclusively wind energy, then the 2007 clarification documentation with the EU Commission, in respect of what environmental results were anticipated and over what period, stated:

• Wind technology will be the dominant technology. The overall environmental improvement, based on wind technology data, will deliver emissions savings as indicated in the following table.

Table A

Emissions	Annual savings per 100 MWs installed Tonnes of oxide
Carbon Dioxide	0.19 ml
Sulphur Dioxide	4k
Nitrogen Oxides	1.3k
	Ml = millions k = thousands

It was therefore claimed back in 2007, as basis for the 'environmental protection' to justify the State Aid funding that for each 1,000 MWs of installed wind energy capacity, 1.9 million tonnes of CO₂ savings would result. So what did we actually get for our money?

If we go to the National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP) progress reports to the EU, we can see that the Irish report dated February 2014 claims 1,763 MW of wind energy were installed by 2012 and 2,738,072 tonnes of CO₂ savings occurred that year. If we look at Table 1 b of the same progress report, then wind energy was responsible for (4,247 / 5,659) or 75% of the renewable electricity, therefore 2.05 million tonnes of CO₂ savings.

This is equivalent to 2.05 / 1.763 = 1.17 million tonnes of CO₂ savings per 1,000 MW of installed capacity – certainly not what was claimed for in the REFIT documentation.

However, we do know this ‘saving’ documented in the NREAP progress report is also completely inaccurate, as the calculation method is false. Namely, the calculation method does not allow for the considerable inefficiencies induced on the grid, by this intermittent input of wind energy, which requires the power stations to operate in a stop start variable manner, i.e. increased balancing. As page 29 of the Irish NREAP progress report clarifies:

• The limitations and caveats associated with this methodology include that it ignores any plant used to meet the associated reserve requirements of renewables. These open cycle plants will typically have lower efficiency and generate increased CO₂ and NOx emissions compared with CCGT and these emissions should be incorporated into the analysis. The purpose of presenting a simplified analysis here is to provide initial insights into the amount of fossil fuels that are displaced by renewables and the amount of emissions thereby avoided.

Note: Open cycle gas turbines are at best 40% efficient as compared to Combined Cycle Gas Turbines (CCGT), which are 55% efficient.

As the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) has been criticised for inaccurate claims, they produced another report quantifying fuel and emissions savings, this time where they claimed their modelling output allows for inefficiencies on the grid. The conclusion of this revised report was that for 2012, wind energy saved 1.5 million tonnes of CO₂.

Therefore with this more in-depth assessment methodology the claimed savings are now at 1.5 / 1.783 = 0.85 million tonnes of CO₂ savings per 1,000 MW of installed wind capacity. Sadly, this is actually less than half (45%) of what they claimed would occur when REFIT was initiated back in 2007 to fund the building of this infrastructure in the first place.

Furthermore, it has to be said that the SEAI report above is highly suspect, in that it is based on computer models, which concluded that increased ramping up and down of gas plants occurred, for the situation where there was no wind installed on the grid. Yet it is well known that power plant operators are complaining that the degree of ramping is now greater to compensate for the increased wind energy input. Indeed, the whole grid is being redesigned, not with the goal of fuel efficient generation, but instead to prioritise fast response, as recent documentation from the Irish grid regulator on this subject demonstrates.

Not only are the 1.5 million tonnes of CO₂ savings for 2012 somewhat exaggerated, but these savings are not going to get a whole lot better as the NREAP progresses. In 2004, Eirgrid produced a report on the “Impact of Wind Power Generation in Ireland on the Operation of Conventional Plant and the Economic Implications”, which clarified:

• The adverse effect of wind on thermal plant increases as the wind energy penetration rises. Plant operates less efficiently and with increasing volatility.

In other words, it is a case of diminishing returns as more wind energy is installed to comply with the trajectory of the NREAP. For Ireland total greenhouse gas emissions in 2013 were 58 million tonnes, while electricity generation amounted to less than 11 million tonnes. So these savings on a national basis are extremely poor when compared with the reckless enthusiasm by decision-makers for renewable energy and their disregard for both the resulting financial and environmental costs. Plus, these alleged savings from Irish wind energy are only 0.004% of global annual emissions of carbon dioxide, which given that there has been no increase in global temperatures since 1998, is the classic case in terms of effectiveness of ‘a drop in the ocean’.

Cost Benefit Analysis obligations for Ireland's Renewable Action Plan - Part One

Ireland finally decides to do a Cost Benefit study for the renewable energy programme

By Pat Swords BE CEng FIChemE CEnv MIEMA

The Sunday Independent of the 12^th April 2015, in an article entitled “Government yet to publish cost benefit analysis on wind energy”, clarified that “a spokeswoman from the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources said the Government believes it is necessary to take a broader look and will soon publish a report.

• "It was considered timely to undertake and publish analysis which takes a broader look at the components contributing to the projected costs, in order to inform public debate and commentary on the cost and financial impact on the electricity customer," she said”.

Given that billions of private and public money have already been spent in an effort to ensure 40% of Ireland's electricity is supplied by renewable sources by 2020, there is more to this than just a complete lack of common sense. After all you “look before you leap for as you sow, ye are likely to reap”, is a well-established proverb and for good reason too. Do different rules apply, as it is our money as electricity consumers, which is to be spent on this programme? So what are the rules? What have we ended up with as a result of all this expenditure to date?

There are in fact a whole series of questions to be addressed, which can be broken down into the following themes:

1. Was there not a regulatory requirement to do this form of cost benefit analysis prior to this programme being initiated?
2. What has actually been the benefit to date from our expenditure?
3. If I am sceptical of this Green / renewable agenda and a wind farm is to be built in my vicinity, what is being used to support this decision making?
4. If I have a right to a social market economy, namely to buy goods and services on the free market at the best prices, what justification is being used to force me to purchase the renewable energy, for which I am not interested in paying a premium for?
5. As regards those who claim we have no option, it’s a mandatory EU target and there are huge fines if we don’t comply; how accurate is that?

Note the supporting information for what is addressed in the following section, plus additional analysis, can be found in the document produced by the same author entitled: “Clean energy, what is it and what are we paying for?”

Part 1 - Obligation to complete a prior cost benefit analysis

Warren Buffet is one of the world’s most successful investors and renowned for his ‘folksy sayings’ such as "risk comes from not knowing what you're doing" and “it’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who has being swimming naked”. Appropriate comments in the light of the complete mess, which was left here in 2008, and which will still affect us for generations to come. That Ireland is acutely prone to ‘Groupthink’ is now well known, the Finnish economist Peter Nyberg, who was commissioned in 2011 to write the official Irish Government report on the banking sector in Ireland, made it very clear, in that ‘Groupthink’ was the main contributing factor to the resulting financial crises, as his executive summary put it:

• Widespread lack of critical discussion within many banks and authorities indicates a tendency to “groupthink”; serious consideration of alternatives appears to be modest or absent. A tendency to favour silo organisation and submissiveness to superiors strengthened this effect, particularly among the public authorities.

As the report went on further to clarify:

• Groupthink occurs when people adapt to the beliefs and views of others without real intellectual conviction. A consensus forms without serious consideration of consequences or alternatives, often under overt or imaginary social pressure. Recent studies indicate that tendencies to groupthink may be both stronger and more common than previously thought.

Indeed, history abounds with regulatory failures, such that countries have adopted formal Regulatory Impact Assessment procedures, which include cost benefit analysis and public consultation procedures. Indeed, the Irish Government decided in June 2005 that Regulatory Impact Analysis should be introduced across all Government Departments and Offices and applied to a range of regulatory measures including:

• Proposals for EU Directives and significant EU Regulations when they are published by the European Commission.

Furthermore, the Irish Regulatory Impact Assessment guidelines from 2005, which were later updated in 2009, clarify:

• The steps of Regulatory Impact Assessment comprise:

1. Statement of policy problem and objective

2. Identification and description of options

3. Impact analysis including costs and benefits of each option

4. Consultation

5. Enforcement and compliance for each option

6. Review

7. Summary of merits / drawbacks of each option and identification of recommended option where appropriate.

• Examine at least three options. Include the ‘no policy change’ option and at least one regulatory alternative

• Cost-benefit analysis: This entails identifying and evaluating expected economic, environmental and social benefits and costs of proposed public initiatives. A measure is considered justified where net benefits can be expected from the intervention.

• Cost Benefit Analysis must be considered where costs of €50 million over ten years are likely.

• Where the costs exceed the predicted benefits, the proposal should be refined or in certain circumstances abandoned.

However, the Irish authorities simply never completed a Regulatory Impact Assessment when the proposal for the 20% renewable energy by 2020 Directive was published by the EU Commission; i.e. this procedure was bypassed with the development and introduction of Directive 2009/28/EC.

If we consider the EU itself, it has an even longer tradition of ‘Impact Assessments’, which as its own guidance clarifies:

• Impact assessment is about gathering and analysing evidence to support policy making. In this process, it verifies the existence of a problem, identifies its underlying causes, assesses whether EU action is needed, and analyses the advantages and disadvantages of available solutions.

One also has to seriously question SEC(2006) 1719, the sixty two page document, which was the official Impact Assessment for this massive roll out of the 20% renewable energy programme. First off, how on earth can one properly assess the impact of such an enormous programme on the EU as a whole, in just sixty two pages, a programme which for the island of Ireland alone is to result in the plastering of the countryside with over three thousand wind turbines and over a thousand kilometres of new high voltage lines? In reality, this can be partly explained by the fact that the 20% target was just ‘pulled out of a hat’ by the politicians, without working out first in advance, as to what was actually achievable, not to mention its costs, benefits and impacts:

• In 2004, the European Parliament called for a target of a 20% share of renewable energy in 2020. Also in 2004, the Commission agreed to "thoroughly assess the impacts of RES resources, notably with regard to their global economic effects before deciding on adopting targets beyond 2010 and before taking a position on a 20% target for the share of renewable energy in 2020"15. And in 2006, the spring European Council asked the Commission to look into a 15% target for renewable energy in 2015.

Did that assessment of the impacts of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) actually happen? The Impact Assessment report states, i.e. claims, that the following impacts were examined:

• Feasibility and achievability risks (Section 5.1.1);

• Costs (Section 5.1.2);

• Benefits (Section 5.1.3):

- Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions

- Security of supply

- Employment, GDP and export opportunities

- Biodiversity impacts

- Regional development and rural economy.

Not only would one question the brevity of the documentation, but also the competency of those who wrote it, in particular the academic institutions and their computer models. The Impact Assessment was most certainly not completed by a recognised engineering company with a track record in major power generation projects and the assessments of the same. For instance with respect to the capital costs required for investment in renewable electricity, it claimed:

• Under PRIMES, which works in detail with the electricity sector, investment needs in this sector are calculated to be about €160bn in the business-as-usual case (renewable share across all sectors: 10.4%) and some €280bn to reach 20% by 2020 in the PRIMES high renewables and efficiency scenario. In comparison, the Green-X model projects, for the power generation sector, an investment cost of €232bn for renewable energy in the business-as-usual scenario and a range of €285–414bn in the 20% scenarios.

Indeed, it can quite easily be calculated that the capital investment in solar panels and wind turbines alone in the EU by the end of 2012 was €600 billion and that's only a fraction of the investment required to be installed by 2020. So we are not even half way there and have completely blown the budget.

Indeed, as regards the alleged environmental benefit, the EU Commission’s official position in their “Renewable Energy Road Map Renewable Energies in the 21st Century: building a more sustainable future COM (2006) 848 final¹” was summarised by:

• “The additional renewable energy deployment needed to achieve the 20% target will reduce annual CO₂ emissions in a range of 600-900 Mt in 2020. Considering a CO₂ - price of €25 per tonne, the additional total CO₂ benefit can be calculated at a range of €150 - €200 billion. Actual CO₂ prices will depend on the future international climate regime”.

So where did this benefit analysis come from? It has to made clear that this is not a benefit analysis, it is a political statement; the €25 per tonne was based on the expected trading price for carbon dioxide. The EU never had, and continues not to have, any assessment of what environmental damage carbon dioxide is doing. While extensive work has been completed in order to assign a financial damage cost to common air pollutants, such as particulates and sulphur dioxide, there is essentially zero equivalent information for carbon dioxide.

We also need to critically evaluate the other claim above, that the additional renewable energy deployment needed to achieve the 20% target would reduce annual CO₂ emissions in a range of 600-900 million tonnes (Mt) in 2020. The source of this claim was the PRIMES computer model used by the Commission, a computer model which has caused a lot of controversy, as it remains the private property of the National Technical University of Athens. While assumptions are published, independent parties cannot replicate the results.

However, the PRIMES model makes no allowance for the significantly increased power station inefficiencies, which are occurring on the grid, with resulting higher fuel consumption and emissions, as more and more intermittent renewable energy is placed on the grid. In other words the balancing costs, which the EU Commission recognised had to be financially funded under the REFIT and similar schemes. The PRIMES computer model is therefore fundamentally flawed and over predicts any emission savings which could arise.

Furthermore, if we come to the claim in the Impact Assessment document that the impacts on “regional development and rural economy” were addressed, then there is zero indication that this happened, as outside the ‘contents list’, it was never actually mentioned again. To reiterate this point, at no stage in the documentation or the associated models PRIMES and Green-X was it ever worked out what exactly was to be built, where it was to be built, what were its proper costs, what were the impacts and real benefits? For instance, there is not a scrap of information on what was to be built in Ireland, where it was to be built, etc. As the introduction to the relevant 2009/28/EC Directive explains, the overall 20% target for the EU was then shared out among the Member States based on their existing level of renewable energy and a factor based on GDP. Hence Ireland obtained a 16% target and Austria, a country with considerable hydro reserves; essentially double that at 34%.

Neither were any alternatives to renewable energies assessed. After all, it’s not unknown that there are a multitude ways of reducing carbon emissions. For instance, it is indisputable that electricity in Denmark costs twice as much as France and has some ten times the amount of carbon emissions in its generation. Furthermore, the carbon price on the EU’s emissions trading scheme has effectively collapsed to €5 per tonne, as there were so many low cost options available, such as in efficiency improvements, to reduce carbon.

None of this was looked at, as the whole Impact Assessment document was solely about a percentage target of renewables and nothing in relation to assessing what this actually ‘would do for you’ or alternatives to achieve that goal. In this regard, there are 35 billion tonnes of anthropogenic (man-made) carbon emissions each year. Given the PRIMES claim that the 20% target would reduce annual CO₂ emissions in a range of 600-900 million tonnes (Mt) in 2020 and this was a clear over-prediction, even if the EU’s renewable energy programme had been reasonably effective, we are still only looking at less than a 2% reduction in anthropogenic emissions. In other words, it simply was never capable of having any impact on the climate cycles.

Note: Both the EU and Ireland in their National Implementation Reports to UNECE with regard to the Aarhus Convention on Access to Justice, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters claim that their system of Regulatory Impact Assessment fulfills the obligation under Article 7 of the Convention. Article 7 being the legal requirement for public participation concerning plans, programmes and policies related to the environment.

There is already a decision of non-compliance (V/9g) of International Law at UNECE against the EU in that it failed to comply with Article 7 of the Convention with respect to the adoption of National Renewable Energy Action Plans (NREAPs) by its Member States on the basis of Directive 2009/28/EC. These NREAPs were rushed through; despite the provisions of Article 7 being that the public were to be provided with the ‘necessary information’ for ‘effective participation’ in the decision-making. There is a parallel provision in the Aarhus Convention related to environmental information, environmental information which includes in its scope; ‘cost-benefit and other economic analyses and assumptions used in environmental decision-making’:

• Recognizing the importance of fully integrating environmental considerations in governmental decision-making and the consequent need for public authorities to be in possession of accurate, comprehensive and up-to-date environmental information.

Indeed, in the UNECE Communication ACCC/C/2010/54 taken by the author and which lead to the previously mentioned decision of non-compliance against the EU, not only did the EU Commission take an ‘Ad Hominem’ approach to the author, but in their opening written statement to Compliance Committee meeting in Geneva stated:  

• “The Convention leaves significant discretion to authorities by using words such as "adequate" and "sufficient". In addition, it focuses on information on threats to the environment and does not require information to be collected on comparative costs”.

So according to the EU, the Irish public are to be kept in the dark about the huge costs they are being forced to fund, despite the Convention’s specific requirement that they are to be provided with the ‘necessary information’ for ‘effective participation’ in the decision-making.

Indeed if we further consider what environmental information was actually in the NREAPs and they are an awful disjointed and rambling document to read, the core issue was to be found right at the end of the NREAP template, which was prepared by the EU Commission as part of the compliance with Directive 2009/28/EC.

5.3.   Assessment of the impacts (Optional)

Table 13

Estimated costs and benefits of the renewable energy policy support measures

Measure	Expected renewable energy use (ktoe)	Expected cost (in EUR) — indicate time frame	Expected GHG reduction by gas (t/year)	Expected job creation

An access to information on the environment request was sent in to the Irish Department of Communications. Energy and Natural Resources in July 2011 in relation to the failure to complete the above section of the NREAP template and the basis for emission savings claims made in the State Aid for Environmental Protection application in 2006 for the REFIT scheme. As the reply documented not filling in the above Section of the NREAP was justified on the basis that 19 Member States did likewise and a verbal decision had been reached by the Department and Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) not to so. Indeed, what the remaining Member States provided for Section 5.3 can be best described as having ‘fudged it’.

In conclusion then the glaring lack of relevant information on not only cost and benefits, but other critical environmental information, is not just related to an abject failure to regulate in legally compliant manner, but also deprived citizens of their legal rights to participate in that decision-making process.  

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1 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52006DC0848&from=EN

€20 billion committed to under Ireland's Renewable Energy Action Plan

What follows is an analysis by Pat Swords, an environmental engineer, on the costs committed by the Irish government in their Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP). The bailout of Anglo Irish Bank ended up costing the Irish people around € 29 billion, so the costs committed under NREAP, mainly for windmills and pylons, will come to at least two thirds of that of the infamous bank. The wind industry and other interested parties require vast long term subsidies to make these huge capital investments viable and the Irish people have been signed up to pay up for generations once again. At the end of this programme, when the subsidies finally come to an end, we will have no choice but to setup a NAMA for windmills, as Colm McCarthy the economist pointed out, adding more billions to the cost. 

There are also many costs to society that can't be so easily valued - for example the loss of jobs as big industry moves out. Consider this letter to the Energy Regulator from Kerry Group, for example, who are trying to fight in a very tight competitive international market with domestic policy dragging them down in a whirlpool of electricity levies, charges and subsidies while their competitors benefit from cheap fuel prices (and by the way - no, fossil fuels do not receive the equivalent of REFIT). 

And what cost to put on tourism and bloodstock jobs ?

The costs committed to in Ireland's Renewable Plan 

by Pat Swords BE CEng FIChemE CEnv MIEMA


Ireland's Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP) was prepared in 2010 without any proper assessment of costs and impacts.  For instance if we take Table 10 on page 138, it gives us the bottom line, i.e. 4,094 MW of onshore wind and 555 MW of offshore:

Link to Ireland's Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP)

If for Ireland at €2 million per MW onshore (workings provided below) and at least €3 million per MW offshore, that is as near as be dammed €10 billion. Then we have the East West Interconnector at €0.6 billion, with more and even longer interconnectors to come to the UK and France - see page 79 of the NREAP -  so we can conservatively lob in another €3 billion for interconnectors. 

We also have Grid 25 at some €4 billion and potentially rising:

•  We will ensure completion of the ongoing capital investment programme in transmission and distribution networks by 2010 and oversee further extensive investment in a programme expected to total €4.9bn up to 2013;
• See Page 21 of: http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/NR/rdonlyres/B0D3D168-3DCD-43E9-8D87-F4666239049F/0/EnergyWhitePaper12March2007.pdf 

Not only is there over 800 km of high voltage in Grid 25, but as the All Island Grid Study demonstrated, there is an additional 5,000 km of medium voltage grid connections required to connect all these wind farms to the high voltage grid - see here and here.

So clearly there is already a billion euros gone to ESB for the medium voltage networks, in addition to Grid 25 which is Eirgird and the high voltage network.

So we are now well in excess of €18 billion for turbines, interconnectors, high voltage grids and medium voltage grids.

Then there is the roll out of smart meters, which are on page 77 of the NREAP. So we can throw in another billion or two there.

If we look at (former Green Party leader) John Gormley's Carbon budget:

• The target is underpinned by analysis conducted in the recent All Island Grid Study which found that a 40% penetration is technically feasible, subject to upgrading our electricity grid and ensuring the development of flexible generating plant on the electricity system. 

So we have to mothball our current base load CCGTs at 55% efficiency to replace them with open cycle fast response gas turbines which are only 35% efficient. So given that a CCGT costs £0.9 million per MW installed (see page 16 below) and an open cycle plant (OCGT) about £0.6 million per MW installed (see page 26), and we are going to require at least 1,000 MW of fast response power to balance the grid fluctuations, there is going to be no change out of another € billion.

Link to future costs of mature commercial Nth-of-a-kind (NOAK) report 

So all in all over €20 billion plus was committed in capital investment alone. To that you have to add the operating costs, profit for the wind investors, costs of inefficient operation of the grid and for what?

If you go to the bottom of the DCENR's REFIT page there is a link to Part III Supplementary Information.

Part III.10

Supplementary Information Sheet on environmental protection aid

Emissions

Annual savings per 100 MWs installed Tonnes of oxide

Carbon Dioxide

0.19  ml.

So this was what was claimed back in 2007 as the justification for all this so called 'environmental protection'. In other words for each 1,000 MWs of installed capacity, 1.9 million tonnes of CO2 savings.

If we go to the latest NREAP progress report to the EU, see below, we can see that the Irish NREAP progress report dated February 2014 claims 1,763 MW of wind energy by 2012 and 2,738,072 tonnes of CO2 savings. If we look at Table 1 b, then wind was responsible for (4,247 / 5,659 ) or 75% of the renewable electricity, therefore 2.05 million tonnes of CO2 savings. 

http://ec.europa.eu/energy/en/topics/renewable-energy/progress-reports

So this is 2.05 / 1.763 = 1.17 million tonnes of CO2 savings per 1,000 MW of installed capacity.

However, we do know this claimed for saving is untrue, as the calculation method is false, in that it does not allow for all the inefficiencies induced on the grid. See page 29 of the NREAP progress report:

• The limitations and caveats associated with this methodology include that it ignores any plant used to meet the associated reserve requirements of renewables. These open cycle plants will typically have lower efficiency and generate increased CO2 and NOx emissions compared with CCGT and these emissions should be incorporated into the analysis. The purpose of presenting a simplified analysis here is to provide initial insights into the amount of fossil fuels that are displaced by renewables and the amount of emissions thereby avoided.

As they have been 'stung' by criticism of fraudulent claims, the SEAI produced yet another one of their reports. This time where they claim their modelling allows for inefficiencies on the grid, such that for 2012, wind saved 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 - link to new SEAI report

So now we are at 1.5 / 1.763 = 0.85 million tonnes per 1,000 MW of installed wind capacity, which is less than half of what they claimed for when REFIT was initiated back in 2007 to fund the building of this infrastructure in this place. Furthermore, it has to be said that the report above is highly suspect, in that the modelling in it concluded that more ramping up and down of gas plants occurred, when there was no wind on the grid, yet it is well known that power plant operators are complaining that they are now ramping their plants more to compensate for wind energy input (see example here). Indeed, the whole grid is being redesigned, not with the goal of fuel efficient generation, but instead to prioritise fast response, as the documentation from the Irish grid regulator below shows (plant with fast response do not use fuel as efficiently as slower operating ones). So the SEAI paper above is not truthful:

• The management of variability and uncertainty is critical to a power system with high levels of wind penetration. Detailed analysis by the TSOs has shown that portfolios that are capacity adequate are unlikely to be adequate in terms of ramping over all the necessary timeframes to efficiently and effectively manage the variable renewable sources and changes in interconnector flows while maintaining system security - from All Island Project report. 

Not surprisingly, the ESB and other generators are against all of this:

http://www.allislandproject.org/en/transmission_current_consultations.aspx?article=11d55fa2-e9cd-454c-aaa5-d689d434db20 

So what are we actually doing, spending billions and billions, wrecking all of our grid and financial viability of our electricity services and all we can claim, using a dodgy computer model is that we have saved 1.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, which is nothing given that Ireland's own CO2 emissions are 58 million tonnes and global emissions are 35 billion tonnes per year.

So we saved 0.004% of global emissions, if we look at the UK Met office official data for global temperatures, with the vertical bars for uncertainty, then since we started all of this renewable gig in the EU in 1998, global temperatures have gone nowhere.

Are we mad, as we are certainly behaving that way?

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Workings for cost of onshore wind in Ireland

Reference document 

• The cost of onshore wind has been assessed internationally by a report completed for the German renewable industry, the main detail of which in relation to total investment costs (GIK -Gesamtinvestionkosten), can be found in the Table below: