Energy Views

This is the autobiography of Dr Eddie O'Connor, the Irishman founder of wind farm developer Airtricity, wind/solar developer Mainstream Renewables and supergrid company Supernode. (As always, my views are my own). Before his own firms, he cut his teeth working for ESB (Ireland's then monopoly power generator and transmission provider), before leading Bord na Móna (BNM) the state-owned producer of peat for power stations. The memoir's title comes courtesy of a Civil Servant's label of Eddie during the period when he more than halved BNM's workforce (before increasing productivity from under 1,700 tonnes per head, to over 5,000). In short: it's a great book. Eddie is a no-nonsense and thoughtful writer and, given his impressive achievements, modest. The main focus is on his time at the four companies, and his leadership ethos, and only very briefly about his upbringing. Within its 230 pages, A Dangerous Visionary describes how he built Airtricity, whic...

Carbon Capture is a term that's been around for quite a while. It's the umbrella category for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and its cousin Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU). Carbon Capture projects were once all the talk in UK policy circles, before major public funding was axed and industry players withdrew. But now it's back up the agenda. The British Government has recently  introduced legislation to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 , and its independent advisers - the Committee on Climate Change - said in its May 2019 report  (p182) that CCS "was on the critical path" for achieving this. It suggested that a whopping 75-175 million tonnes (megatonnes, Mt) per annum of CO₂ storage would be needed by that time. But let's go back a little and briefly define some terms. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) means capturing carbon dioxide (CO 2  herein) from an industrial process - like making energy or a tangible substance - and burying it permanently in...