Letter: climate fiction at the Irish Farmers Journal

DEAR SIR: During the last few weeks, I have followed with interest several discussions regarding global warming, carbon footprint, etc. It would seem that Matt Dempsey fell foul of our scientific brethren for daring to question their science which appears to attach significant responsibility for our current environmental woes to agriculture, and in particular, our ruminant sector.

Several solutions have been put forward. Microsoft wants to plant trees, an economist seems to suggest taxing emitters and scientists seem to advocate feeding more grain produced from an oil-based production system as a way of reducing grass intake (and therefore limiting methane production).

I cannot see how any of these approaches actually changes anything for the better. Neither the amount of energy nor the source of that energy will change – not one single drop less of carbon fuel will be burned. If anything, feeding more grain to ruminants may actually increase the amount of oil consumed due to the fact that grain is produced from an oil-based system.

The mantra of “user pays” seems to be the order of the day. Surely it would make more sense to remove as many carbon fuels as possible and therefore genuinely reduce potentially harmful emissions from our systems.

Using Irish technology, we can also store and utilise this energy efficiently to milk cows, cool milk, boil water and run other electrical equipment.

Electric vehicles are not an uncommon sight on our roads – John Deere recently announced that an electric tractor is under development and an electric loader is already available on the Irish market. Clearly the concept of displacing oil and other carbon fuels as energy sources in agriculture is not the stuff of science fiction; it is a reality in the here and now.

Our experience over the last five years is that generating energy from solar pvs, wind, solar thermals and storage of surplus electricity is an extremely viable proposition. Given today’s costs, one could expect a payback time of around six or seven years and even less depending on how much oil can be displaced by changing to electric vehicles.

I have to admit that our primary motivation to become involved in renewable energy was not to save the planet. We were simply interested in reducing our costs. The fact that we are reducing our environmental impact, living and running a small food processing business, is a very happy side effect.

Now that all the elements of our system are in place and fully functioning, we have achieved 99% self-sufficiency. On 23 April 2017, our combination of generation and storage reached the point where we did not require grid-supplied electricity. Time will tell. We may do well to remember that the most learned and eminent scholars once considered anyone who did not believe the earth was flat to be a heretic.