Some 10,000t of miscanthus that were supposed to supply an Irish bioenergy market is being exported to Britain at a loss of €8m to the Irish economy.

The bales of miscanthus are being shipped to Brigg renewable energy power station in Britain, a 41MW combined heat and power plant.

The sale has been forced by the absence of a meaningful renewable heat incentive (RHI) scheme in Ireland to provide a market for biomass crops that were produced in the past decade.

Quinns of Baltinglass, which is selling the miscanthus to Britain, has said the Government has “failed miserably”.

Quinns was one of the main drivers of miscanthus production. It bought the crop back from growers for the past decade in anticipation of the introduction of a RHI scheme, but this did not happen.

The company was forced to look for other markets for the crop and, as a result, all of the miscanthus in store is being exported to a real market.

Paddy O’Toole from Quinns told the Irish Farmers Journal: “The Government has failed miserably on its promises to introduce a meaningful RHI scheme and yet the country faces significant penalties for failing to meet our greenhouse gas emission targets.

“But we can’t afford to continue to hold the crop in store and so we had to export.”

Comment

The Government incentivised the production of renewable energy crops in the mid-2000s by providing grant aid of up to €1,450/ha for the establishment of willow and miscanthus.

While there was no path to market in the initial scheme, most believed other arms of Government would subsequently incentivise biomass for energy production.

The move to sell all the existing stocks, plus most of the 2018 harvest, means Ireland is losing the carbon benefit of the crop, as well as not having delivered real value to the taxpayer for the establishment grant.

The roughly 2,500ha of miscanthus, grant-aided in the past, costs up to €3.5m. Each tonne of miscanthus is equivalent to roughly 400 litres of heating oil. And each tonne is estimated to be worth about €450 in terms of potential savings on imminent fines relating to greenhouse gas climate change targets.

So the 10,000t is a further €4.5m being forfeited by the economy. Together this represents up to €8m of a loss to the economy.

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Miscanthus sold to Britain at a cost of €8m

The export of miscanthus to Britain makes for a poor return on taxpayer investment. The export of 10,000t adds to our potential liability for failure to meet our greenhouse gas obligations.