Ireland’s heat sector is proving particularly difficult to decarbonise. It is clear that the country stands to miss its 2020 renewable heat target of 12% - and by as much as 50%.
Good efforts have been made by industry to develop a plan to decarbonise heat usage, centring largely on the generation of biomethane and injection into the national gas grid to displace natural gas.
While this plan has many merits, it presents a challenge for communities located off the national gas grid.
One-point-eight-million people live in rural areas across Ireland. Seventy-five percent of rural areas or over 500,000 properties in Ireland are not connected to the natural gas grid.
Most rural homes (65%) are heated with oil and over 10% use peat for heating.
Furthermore, around 42% of the rural building stock is relatively old, built before 1980, meaning these buildings are typically less energy efficient and have higher fuel bills than modern homes.
Vision
These households and communities now run the risk of falling behind our decarbonisation transition by having little alternatives but heavy fossil fuel.
However, a new vision document recently published has laid out a plan to decarbonise 500,000 oil boilers by 2040, saving some 1.9 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year.
Liquid Gas Ireland (LGI), which represents the Irish LPG and BioLPG industry, recently published its new 2040 vision document aiming to encourage the transition to the low carbon economy.
LPG consists of butane or propane, is a smoke-free fuel and reduces emissions by 33% compared with other fossil fuels such as oil, peat and coal when burned.
BioLPG, also called biopropane, is chemically indistinct from LPG. BioLPG is produced from renewable sources and reduces emissions by 90% versus conventional LPG.
The Irish Farmers Journal recently took part in a panel discussion about the role which LPG and BioLPG can play in contributing to decarbonising rural Ireland.