Is Natural Gas “Essential for Ireland’s Future Energy Security”?

摘要: It is widely recognised that the current Irish energy system carries a significant security-of-supply risk, due to heavy reliance on natural gas, with very constrained diversity and capacity of import supply routes. This risk may become even more severe in the years immediately ahead as the only significant indigenous natural gas source (the Corrib gas field) is depleted and the other (even higher carbon intensity) fossil energy sources (coal, oil and peat) are progressively removed from the Irish energy mix. In July 2018, the Irish Academy of Engineering (IAE) published a major report assessing this evolving natural gas security-of-supply risk, entitled “Natural Gas — Essential for Ireland’s Future Energy Security” (IAE 2018). The report argued that substantial continued reliance on natural gas in the overall Irish energy system is unavoidable up to at least 2040. On this basis, it recommended a number of major strategic interventions designed to manage the consequently deepening security-of-supply risk, i.e., measures attempting to assure continued access to natural gas. In this response to that report, we present an independent peer evaluation of the basis for these recommendations. We base our analysis on the presumption that Ireland is committed to good faith action consistent with its ratification of the Paris Climate Agreement (UNFCCC 2015): specifically to play its equitable and commensurate part in holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C. We assume the IAE shares this premise. On this basis we find that the IAE analysis is …